Living with Plants

Wort's New

2011-10-15T16:05:00.001-04:00

What Hannibal Lecter said in Silence of the Lambs is true: coveting begins with what we see every day. And when I'm out walking in my neighborhood, admiring the things I see growing in my neighbor's yards, I sometimes find myself wishing I had the same plant. Thus it was with Hypericum f. 'Sunburst' (St. John's Wort—the shrub, not the herb). After long noticing it in a nearby garden, I finally broke down and got one of my own.

As with most new plants, I had to figure out what was normal behavior, and what wasn't. The fact that it died back to the ground late last autumn? Apparently that's normal, kind of like my beloved Caryopteris 'Snow Fairy'.

Hypericum forms a nice, medium-sized shrub with leaves that remind me of eucalyptus. This year it started blooming in early July, and stopped around early September. It didn't flower as prolifically as the neighbor's plant, or get as large, but this was really its first full year in the yard, so it'll take a little time to get established.

I had appreciated its bright yellow flowers from a distance, but really like them up close, especially the gazillion filaments, like a firework exploding. Hey, maybe that's why this variety is called 'Sunburst'!

Feathery Amberboa

2011-08-03T12:50:00.007-04:00

Some of the new plants that we try each year are just a different species of a familiar genus. Some I've never even heard of at all. Such was the case with Amberboa muricata 'Sweet Sultan'.

It looks a lot like your basic centaurea (bachelor's button), and both plants are in the same family, so I'm not sure what distinguishes one from the other. But my husband was intrigued by the picture in the Thompson and Morgan catalog, and so we ended up starting some of the seeds last winter.

The young leaves in the cells looked so much like calendula that I inadvertently planted the amberboa in an area that I had intended only for yellow flowers. Ah, well. I can always say that I intended its purple blooms to provide a contrast.

Although all of the Calendula 'Sherbet Fizz' that I planted melted away under the strong spring rains and winds, the amberboa hung in there. The 18- to 24-inch plant started blooming in early July, and even though I've been negligent in deadheading it—I haven't done anything in the yard for weeks, it's been so hot!—it still has buds.

Amberboa is an annual, so I'll have to decide if I want to grow it again, but it's easy to germinate, tough in the face of environmental adversity, and adds a nice bit of color, so we'll see!

Hello, Dahlia!

2011-07-21T12:42:00.006-04:00

In spite of the fact that we have numerous flower and veggie beds, and spend several hours a week tending to them (except when it's unbearably hot, as it has been recently), I consider myself a somewhat lazy gardener because there are some tasks that I just won't do, and lifting bulbs or tubers or whatever is one of them. I have often admired dahlias, but wouldn't grow them for that reason—I knew I wasn't going to bother digging them up in the fall and replanting them in the spring.

Then last winter my husband noticed some dahlia seeds in the Thompson and Morgan catalog, and that I could do! We started them indoors in mid-March, and they grew so vigorously that I didn't even realize that they were overwhelming the basil in the adjacent cells. (Most of the basil seedlings were so weakened by this that they ended up dying when I transplanted them to the yard, but I had extra seed that I direct-sowed, so I'll still have pesto this year if I remember to harvest the leaves before the first frost!)

I generally think of dahlias as tall plants, but Dahlia 'Fireworks Mixed' is low-growing. I ended up putting it in front of some taller calendula that had self-seeded from the year before. They also have a yellow Hypericum f. 'Sunburst' (St. John's Wort bush) as a backdrop, and tigridia just around the bend, so this little corner of the yard has developed into the Yellow Bed. (It's next to the veggie garden, so hopefully all this bright color attracts pollinators!)

These dahlias have a single row of mostly yellow petals with streaks and splotches of red, although a few are almost coral-colored.

They started blooming in late May, and are still going, although they don't bloom quite as prolifically as I would have liked. Perhaps that's my own fault; I'm not very conscientious about deadheading them. Nevertheless, I definitely like them quite a bit, and I'm wondering if, like the calendula, they'll self-seed. But I don't think I'll leave that to chance; I think I'll be including more dahlias in my seed order this winter!

The Daylily Awards

2011-07-07T13:07:00.011-04:00

Choosing my favorite child is easy; I only have one. But choosing my favorite daylily? That's a challenge. We have almost 40 different varieties in our yard, and I love all of them, but I must admit that I do not love all of them equally. Some have qualities that make them stand out from the others. To that end, here are my own personal award-winners:

Early Bird Award. The winner in this category is Hemerocallis 'Bitsy'. This year, its lovely lemon-yellow flowers started opening on May 24, a good two and a half weeks before any of our other daylilies. The initial flush lasted for more than 30 days, and last year it rebloomed in late July/early August, making it not only the first to bloom but also one of the last to bloom, prolonging the show.
Be Fruitful and Multiply Award. Maybe it's just because I really need to divide the clump, but it seems to me that Hemerocallis 'Siloam Gumdrop' still sends up an awful lot of scapes. With most daylilies, I'm happy to get anywhere from two to ten stems. With Gumdrop, I'm looking at 20 or more! Each with multiple buds, of course, so I have this mass display. It takes me almost as long to deadhead Gumdrop alone as it takes to do the rest of the bed, but I'm not complaining!
Eye-Popping Award. When you step into the back yard and just scan the beds, it's impossible for your eyes not to rest on Hemerocallis 'Chicago Star' for two good reasons—size and color. This star of the garden has the largest flowers of all my daylilies in a bright yellow shade that makes you want to put on your sunglasses!

A close second in terms of brightness is 'Buzz Bomb', a fiery orange-red variety with a yellow throat.

Planted together, you just can't miss them!
Best Imitation of a Sunrise Award. If 'Chicago Star' and 'Buzz Bomb' are the most garishly colored, Hemerocallis 'Little Rainbow' is the most subtle, and one of the most beautiful daylilies I've ever grown. It's a dainty plant, but the understated blend of pale yellow and pink makes it a standout.
Ruffle My Feathers Award. Although I probably tend to choose daylilies for their color, with Hemerocallis 'Smokey Mountain Autumn' I found both a gorgeous apricot hue and a pleasing form. This one has the most pronounced ruffled edges of any of my daylilies, and I find it utterly charming.

So those are my favorite picks...for this year, at least!

Birch Bed, Revisited

2011-06-22T12:22:00.045-04:00

Sometimes, in a garden, you just have to go back to the drawing board. That's what we recently did with the bed at the back of our property that we call the Birch Bed because of its proximity to one of our river birches.

It was one of the few beds that existed when we bought our house, and it consisted of two gargantuan clumps of 10-foot bamboo-like grasses, two burning bushes, two white buddleia (butterfly bushes), two large clumps of perovskia (Russian sage), a small clump of yellow achillea (yarrow) and stokesia (Stoke's asters), three beautiful red daylilies, some orange Asiatic lilies, and a large clump of bearded iris that I had transplanted from a different part of the yard but that barely bloomed.

Occasionally I would throw some other plants back there, but there was no rhyme or reason to the design, and the grasses (which were a real pain to cut down each year) were on a mission to crowd everything else out. The bed did have some nice color in autumn, but we wanted to be able to admire it more often than that.

We were so happy with the improvements that Garden Room Design made to the corner bed (formerly known as the Bermuda Triangle, now known as the Fertile Crescent) that we decided to have them draw up a plan for the Birch Bed as well.

Out went everything except for the daylilies and the bearded iris, and even those got transplanted from the shady portion of the bed to the sunny side, which should encourage them to bloom more.

The tall grasses have been replaced with two good-sized but not overwhelming plants. One is a Limelight Hydrangea, which is supposed to have greenish-white flowers in mid-summer that turn deep pink in the fall. I wasn't expecting any flowers this year, but when I was walking through the yard this afternoon, I noticed buds!

The other large plant in the back is Persicaria polymorpha, which is tiny now but within a couple years will become about six feet high and wide, and sport white astilbe-like flowers in late summer.

On the sunny side of the bed are the transplanted iris (both bearded and Siberian from elsewhere in the yard), two Geranium 'Rozanne', and three Geranium 'Shepherd's Warning'. The 'Rozannes' that we have in front are fabulous plants that bloom from late May until frost without any care or attention; I'm not sure yet what to expect from 'Shepherd's Warning', which is a smaller, more low-growing plant, but we'll see how they do.

Several other plants that we've never grown before include Leucanthemum 'Banana Cream', a Shasta daisy with lemon-yellow blooms that gradually turn butter-yellow...

...Veronica 'Royal Candles', adding a touch of blue at the front of the bed...

...and Baptisia 'Carolina Moonlight', a very graceful plant that should have pale yellow flowers spikes at the beginning of next summer.

I've grown Monarda didyma 'Panorama Red Shades' from seed, and have been moderately pleased with the results, but the Birch Bed has 'Cambridge Scarlet', and I'm eager to see how it compares. For now, they're just little guys.

Equally small this year are the Phlox 'David's Lavender'—a plant that always reminds me of the garden my mother grew in our back yard when I was young. Of course, it'll be another year before that's really going as well.

On the shady side of the bed, we've got some Astilbe Ostrich Plume, still just getting established...

...Heuchera 'Plum Pudding'...

...'August Moon' and 'Stained Glass' hostas (well-sprayed with deer repellent) and Hakonechloa m. Aureola...

...and finally some Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, which were fabulous in the Fertile Crescent last year, but have been struggling this year. We'll see if they like the Birch Bed better.

Our designer also recommended an accent piece, like an attractive birdhouse, and when we were at Summerfair (the local arts fair), we came across a wrought iron and stone piece that struck our fancy.

All in all, I like the new design, and can't wait to see it become more established in the years to come!

Caprilla Cream of the Crop

2011-06-10T17:44:00.007-04:00

A couple years ago, on the Loveland Garden Tour, I saw a honeysuckle vine that I just had to have. Last year we planted Lonicera periclymenum 'Caprilla Cream' outside our screened porch, and already I love this plant!

The main appeal for me was the color of the flower. Its buds are pink and its blooms are a pretty shade of yellowish cream, and since the flower clusters typically have both buds and blooms at the same time, you get this wonderful bi-color effect, especially en masse.

So far, it appears to be blooming only on the old growth from last year, which is clustered around the base of the trellis.

However, by next year, I expect it to rival its cousin at the front of the house, 'Graham Thomas'. (I know there's a trellis under there somewhere!)

Honeysuckle has a nice fragrance, which is one of the reasons why we planted it next to the porch, although in that location it's got competition from the adjacent Rose 'Blanc Doublet de Coubert' and Daphne 'Beulah'. Between the three of them, it's like walking through the perfume section of a department store!

For Whom the Canterbury Bells Toll

2011-06-05T15:26:00.008-04:00

If nothing else, gardening teaches patience, especially if you're growing biennials from seed. Last year, we started about 18 Campanula 'Cup and Saucer' seedlings that looked like this when we transplanted them to the bed in the spring.

At the end of the year, they were nice and full, but still quite close to the ground. Then by mid-May, they shot up three and a half feet, sending up a thick central stem with several smaller side-shoots. (Last fall, a critter ate what would have been the center stem of one of my plants, and as a result I had nothing but side-shoots on that one.)

One of the challenges of trying new plants is that you sometimes don't figure out what they need in terms of care until it's too late. Last year, I learned that the hesperis really needed to be staked before it started blooming, or else the rains would knock it down to the ground. I had grown Canterbury bells many years ago, and didn't recall them needing staking, but boy, did 'Cup and Saucer' need it! The flowers, which stayed in bud for a couple weeks, are huge! Some of the pink ones are fully double.

Even the lavenders and blues, while not as full as the pinks, are thick with blossoms.

As a result, with the heavy rains we had this spring, the plants were leaning all over the place even before the buds opened. I had a few extra supports around, and propped some of them up, but once a flower stalk is bent by weather, straightening it up can cause it to break. So I resigned myself to the fact that the Canterbury bells were going to socialize with the shorter snapdragons, and let it go at that.

I'm very curious to see what happens next year. My foxgloves, although theoretically biennials, came back nicely this year, having been started from seed three years ago. But I'm not sure that the campanulas, which seem to rely on that central stem for a good show, will come back in the same way. But they're so pretty that even if I have to start some every year, I might just do that to ensure that I can always enjoy them.

Andre the Aquilegia, Not!

2011-05-30T17:13:00.007-04:00

At one point in the movie The Princess Bride, when the villain keeps saying that the unfolding events are inconceivable, one of the characters finally turns to him and says, "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

I'm beginning to share that sentiment when it comes to gardening catalogs and the word giant.

The one time when that adjective was justified was with Russian Giant sunflowers. Those really were gargantuan—they grew to be about 7-8 feet tall, with flower heads that were easily a foot wide. At the end of the year, I had to use a saw to cut them down.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that my Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant' weren't any larger than any other crocuses I've grown, and I now have to say the same for the Aquilegia x hybrida 'McKana Giants' that I started from seed two years ago and which just this spring flowered for the first time.

Don't get me wrong—I like the plant quite a bit, even if it did take a lot of coaxing to get a very small patch going. It's just that if you're going to call a columbine giant, it should at least be bigger than its cousin in the front yard, 'Danish Dwarf'!

Heavenly Hellebores

2011-05-10T20:07:00.007-04:00

For years, we'd heard other people sing the praises of hellebores—how easy they are to grow, how deer-resistant they are, etc. etc. But we had never been able to get one to bloom—until this year!

Maybe we just didn't get big enough plants to start with. In 2009, we bought some small pots of Helleborus x hybridus 'London Fog', Helleborus x sternii 'Hot Flash', and Helleborus x hybridus 'Mellow Yellow Strain'. By the following year, none had bloomed, and all but Mellow Yellow had died. So when our fabulous garden designer, Monica Riordan of Garden Room Design, redid the shady corner bed and suggested some Helleborus o. 'Royal Heritage', I was skeptical. But we really, really did want these plants to work for us, so we gave it one last shot. And I'm so glad we did!

In late March, not only did all of the Royal Heritage plants bloom, but so did the Mellow Yellow! The latter was true to its name, producing flowers with a hint of yellow.

Some of the Royal Heritage flowers had lovely dark red edging, but most were cream-colored.

It was a modest display, but more than we'd ever had in the past.

Now the one thing I have to figure out is when they've actually stopped blooming. Almost two months later, the flowers are still tucked in among the foliage, although they've all turned green at this point. Will they eventually wither and drop? Or will they stay like this until the end of the season? For the first time in our gardening lives, we'll find out!

The Mukdenian Candidate

2011-04-23T10:22:00.007-04:00

When we tucked some Mukdenia 'Karasuba' into our garden last fall, we really didn't know what to expect. My husband had been intrigued by it in a catalog, but we had never seen it growing (or would have known what it was if we did see it). But now we know.

The Mukdenia started sending up clusters of little pinkish buds in late March. (We put row covers over them when we had several hard frosts just to make sure we actually saw them bloom.)

Over time, the buds began to open into tiny white flowers with maroon anthers.

And eventually, the rest of the foliage caught up as well, forming bright green clumps of hellebore-like leaves.

It's now late April, and we can still see the white flowers among the foliage, although at this point they're a little more subdued.

In the fall, the leaves become tipped with red, giving the plant year-round interest.

Mukdenia is a native plant in Chinese woodlands, and takes its name from the city of Mukden in Manchuria...hence the blog title!

Crocus Didn't Croak

2011-03-21T12:58:00.004-04:00

Last fall, we planted several new varieties of spring-blooming bulbs, and we're starting to see the rewards of our efforts. This past weekend, the Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant' started blooming.

"Giant" might be a bit of an exaggeration; I find this variety more petite than other crocuses I've grown. But then again, other crocuses have been critter chow, and although this one appears to be fading quickly, at least it didn't get eaten!

Greetings from Galanthus

2011-03-01T18:12:00.004-05:00

This year, we finally achieved a long-time goal: we had something flowering in the garden in February.

We haven't had much luck with snowdrops in the past, but last fall, we planted a few Galanthus nivalis 'Viridi-apice', and all of them popped and are blooming.

This particular variety is a little unusual in that the tips of the flower petals are green. I didn't plant them as closely as I should have, so I'm hoping that they'll colonize!

Good Karma

2010-12-28T22:09:00.005-05:00

With snow on the ground outside, I'm still enjoying some of this summer's produce—the strips, squares, and diced bits of the 'Karma' peppers that I put in the freezer as the growing season wound down.

In 2009, I grew 'Fat N Sassy' (referring here to the pepper variety, although I did probably put on a pound or two myself), and my 12 plants produced a measly 28 peppers—barely more than two peppers per plant! This year's 'Karma' peppers really put them to shame, with 16 plants producing 118 peppers—more than seven huge peppers per plant! 'Karma' peppers turn a gorgeous red, although I did harvest several while they were still green. (It always drives me crazy that the grocery stores charge so much more for red peppers than green peppers, when the only difference between them is a couple more weeks of ripening!)

So now when I need some peppers for chili, or enchiladas, or stir-fries, I just reach into my freezer and pull out a bag of summer.

Summer Bulbs, Some Are Busts

2010-12-05T16:29:00.009-05:00

Having previously reflected on which annuals worked well for us this year and which didn't, I realized that except for waxing eloquent on Tigridia pavonia 'Canariensis', which we actually dug up and stored in the basement for next season, I have not shared much about our other experiment this year, which was a variety of summer bulbs.

We had wanted to order Zephyranthes rosea (rain lilies), which we've grown before, but our supplier was out, and they sent Habranthus robustus instead, which were supposed to be very similar. And perhaps it's my faulty memory, but I'm inclined to say that I liked the Zephyranthes better. They seemed to bloom more profusely and more regularly. Maybe it was just too dry this summer. Or maybe the post-rain blooming pattern was less of a surprise since we had grown them before, and the novelty had worn off. We put some Habranthus in a pot out on the patio, and some among the petunias around the mail box. We didn't bother to lift the ones in the yard, but the ones from the patio are now in the garage, and if they survive the winter, they survive, but I don't think I would order them again.

One variety of Zephyranthes that were were able to obtain was citrina, a very small, lemon yellow flower that bloomed once or twice the whole season. Of course, it didn't help that the rabbits seemed to like the leaves entirely too much, so that constant assault might have discouraged them from blooming more. But still, I'm not going to pick a fight that I can't win, and if I can't keep the rabbits off the Zerphyanthes citrina, then there's just no point in trying to grow it again.

Along those lines, the Bessara elegans, which would have had small clusters of orange flowers, had none. This one, too, got eaten to the ground by critters, and unlike the Zephyranthes citrina, it made no effort at a come-back. That's another summer bulb that we can cross off our list for next year.

Likewise, the Triteleia laxa 'Queen Fabiola' sent up a few leaves but never bloomed, but that was a better performance than the Tritonia crocata mixture or the Zephyranthes candida, which never even bothered to produce leaves.

So except for the Tigridia, which is now near and dear to our hearts, I don't think we'll be seduced by summer bulbs again.

Now spring bulbs...that's a different story! This fall we did plant some 'Uncle Tom' and 'Oratorio' tulips, along with Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant', Eranthis hyemalis (winter aconite), Galanthus nivalis 'Viridi-apice' (snowdrops), and Ipeion uniflorum 'Wisley Blue'. So we'll see what pleasant sights are in store for us this May, when hope (if not bulbs) springs eternal.

Annual Assessment

2010-11-19T12:42:00.019-05:00

Every year, we try a few annuals in the garden. Some plants work out well...others not so much.

I think the hardiness award this year has to go to the snapdragons. We started our Antirrhinum majus 'Twinny Peach' from seed indoors last March, and it had buds before we even got it in the ground. They started blooming in early May, and they're still blooming. A week before Thanksgiving!! We've had several frosts, but the snapdragons seem unperturbed. I'm beginning to think these guys will be blooming under the snow! I'm definitely going to grow these again, although I think I should plant them more densely than I did; one of my neighbors put hers maybe four inches apart, and they formed an absolute blanket of color.

I even got some variation in color over the course of the year. They started out a fairly pale yellow, and as the season progressed, they showed richer peach tones with pinkish highlights.

I also have to give very high marks to my "volunteer" cleome. A couple years ago, we planted some all-white Cleome hasslerana in front of our bedroom window, and I don't think we got any results from it (which is rather rare, since cleome is normally easy to grow). So I wrote it off, assuming that the spot I put them in just wasn't a happy place for them. Then this year, out of a blue, a lone plant popped. I'm not sure if it was a stray seed from my original planting (it bloomed the traditional pink and white, not pure white), or if a passing bird dropped it, but however it got there, it grew like crazy. I don't really like touching cleome because they're kind of sticky, but what a delight it was to open the bedroom shade every morning and see these perky flowers! I jiggled the seed pods all over the area in hopes that more will sprout next year, and I saved a few in an envelope to start indoors, just in case.

I'm not a huge fan of petunias, but I have to admit that the Petunia 'Blanket Rose' that I planted around the mailbox bloomed nicely this year. We picked these up from a nursery in mid-June. The four plants spread to almost completely fill about ten square feet, and they ignored the sun and drought, flowering profusely until earlier this month.

Having disparaged my Zinnia 'Zahara Starlight Rose' in a previous post, I do want to mention that, toward the end of the season, the flowers did finally start looking like they were supposed to. And whether or not they had rose-colored stars upon thars (as Dr. Seuss would say), they really were floriferous plants, growing to exactly the size I wanted, and blooming non-stop for five months. I might end up giving these guys an opportunity for a repeat performance next year.

A less successful experiment was the nasturtiums. I've successfully grown them at other homes in Ohio, and when I direct-seeded my Tropaeolum majus 'Vanilla Berry', I was very pleased with how quickly they germinated and sent up clusters of leaves. And that was it. I think I can count on one hand the number of flowers I got. They're not going to get a second audition.

The biggest disappointment, though, had to be the melampodium. I've grown Melampodium paludosum 'Melanie' before, with fabulous results. But here are pictures of this year's flowers.

No, your browser is not malfunctioning. I got zip, nada, goose egg. The plants didn't even make it for a week. Almost as soon as they hit the ground, they shriveled up and were seen no more.

I might have to assume some of the responsibility for that. I put them under a couple small maple trees, and the competition for water might have been too much for them. Maybe I'll try growing melampodium around the mail box instead of petunias next year, although if they don't like drought, they're not going to like that spot.

On a complete non-sequitur—for those of you who are kind enough to follow this blog, I apologize for not posting more frequently. I'm currently working on a book (not about gardening, alas), and it's consuming almost all of my free time. I'll still try to write something here at least once a month, but it might be a while until I'm back to posting more regularly. Thanks again for reading!

Carrying a Torch for Tithonia

2010-10-20T12:39:00.009-04:00

As fall sets in, most of the perennials and flowering shrubs in our garden have decided that it's time to turn out the lights and go to sleep for a few months. The annuals, happily, have not gotten the memo. And one of the most dramatic of those is Tithonia rotundifolia 'Torch', or Mexican sunflower.

It's hard not to admire a plant that grows more than six feet tall in a single season. I direct-seeded my Tithonia on May 5, and by June 25, it was a good-sized seedling.

By the end of July, when it started blooming, it was about four feet tall, and kept getting both taller and fuller as the season progressed.

I planted it adjacent to the buddleia, and it happily provided a different flavor of necter to visiting butterflies.

And unlike regular sunflowers, which can be quite prickly, Tithonia has soft, fuzzy stems and leaves, like lamb's tail. For a tactile gardener like me, that's a definite bonus, especially since I'll soon be pulling it up to put the garden to bed.

Margheritaville

2010-09-13T12:27:00.008-04:00

Was Jimmy Buffet singing about 'Margherita' paste tomatoes? Maybe not. But he should have been.

A fan of square foot gardening, I normally grow 16 tomato plants in my 4x4' bed: eight paste tomatoes, four regular tomatoes, and four cherry tomatoes. But I didn't think I got as many paste and regular tomatoes per plant as I should have last year, so I decided to see if maybe the tomatoes were a bit too crowded, and growing nine instead of 16 would produce a better harvest. (I'm not sure why I thought fewer tomato plants would yield more total tomatoes. This is is why I was not a math major.) Anyway, this year I planted seven 'Margherita' paste tomatoes, one 'Razzleberry' tomato, and one 'Supersweet 100' cherry tomato.

The plants got really tall and lanky while I was waiting for the sugar snap peas to finish up their turn in the bed, and I ended up doing "trench planting", which involves laying the plants sideways rather than putting them upright in a hole, and letting just the tops of them stick out of the soil. Tomatoes will grow roots along their stems, and more roots theoretically equal bigger, healthier plants. It definitely made them harder to train in their cages; they went sprawling all over the place! And when the winds blew, the more distantly spaced cages seemed to tip over more than when they were jammed one on top of the other. But the plants did flourish.

I was a little worried when the Margheritas started fruiting. With most paste tomatoes, the flower gives way to a little pea-sized tomato, that eventually turns into something grape-sized, that eventually turns into something egg-sized. Round is the key concept here. I really, really wish I had taken a picture of my Margheritas when they first formed, because they looked more like little green Thai peppers—long, narrow, and pointy. No round to be found. They did fill out over time, but still maintained that elongated shape.

I lost a dozen or so to blossom-end rot, but that didn't put a big dent in their production. From my seven plants, I ended up with more than 35 pounds of very meaty, flavorful paste tomatoes. When I parboiled them in anticipation of processing them for sauce, the skins practically fell off by themselves—a non-issue for me, since I put everything through a tomato press anyway, but if I were canning whole tomatoes, this would have been a big plus. I canned 16 pints of sauce, plus had plenty of tomatoes for fresh salads, chili, and cheeseburgers in paradise...

Name That Caterpillar

2010-09-04T17:07:00.006-04:00

Having just written a somewhat disparaging post about my Brazilian Bachelor's Buttons, I went out in the yard late this afternoon to discover two things:

The flowers do seem to open up considerably more in the late afternoon. Perhaps I didn't notice this before because it's been too hot to go out in the late afternoon, and because I spend most days of the week in a cubicle. I really must do something about that.
While I might have had second thoughts about my button beauties, the caterpillars are unanimously in favor of them.

The bachelor's buttons are at the end of a long row of butterfly bushes, so it should be no surprise that there are caterpillars afoot. I'm barely literate when it comes to identifying butterflies themselves, let alone their caterpillars, but I'm fairly sure that I've seen various monarchs and swallowtails fluttering about. Would anyone out there care to take a guess at what these little guys will become (besides lunch for the robins)?

Not Quite Cute as a Button

2010-09-04T10:13:00.007-04:00

The new plant that I was the most excited about at the beginning of the year was Centratherum intermedium 'Button Beauty', or Brazilian Bachelor's Button. The photo in the Park Seed catalog was captivating:

The seeds did great in the cells. The plants did great in the garden. In fact, with the heat and drought now upon us here in Ohio, and even my native plants like echinacea turning brown and withering, my button beauties are as lush and green as if they were living in a rain forest.

If all I cared about was the foliage, I would be thrilled with this plant. But I kinda bought it because of the flowers. And at best, mine looked like this:

It's as if they're trying really hard to open up, but they can't quite bring themselves to do it. They're shy. Perhaps I should bake them some Powdermilk Biscuits.

Completely Jaded

2010-08-28T15:08:00.004-04:00

I tend to experiment a lot in the veggie garden, always trying new techniques and new varieties in the quest for the perfect pepper, the most terrific tomato, the coolest cucumber. Well, when it comes to green beans, I think I should just stop my search. I've grown many different kinds of beans over the years, but I have never grown any better than Jade. So why keep looking? They were unbothered by bugs until the very last week or two, they showed no sign of disease, and my little 4x4' bed produced 15 pounds of the most beautiful, tasty beans I could imagine. I think that deserves all caps—FIFTEEN POUNDS! That's 50% more beans than I got from Tenderpick last year.

I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of them when they were growing, especially since they were so lovely and floriferous, but here's a photo of some of the 12 pints that we'll be enjoying later in the fall and winter, when the days when I could go out and pick produce for the evening's meal will be just a fond memory. Until next spring.

Calendula Girl

2010-08-24T12:45:00.006-04:00

I'm not sure what I think of the Calendula officinalis 'Citrus Smoothies' that we started from seed this year. On the one hand, they got off to a good start—they germinated well and grew vigorously in the cells, and one plant even started budding before we transplanted it to the garden. The flowers themselves, while not spectacular, were pretty enough, although the quality of the blooms was inconsistent. (This photo shows one of the nicest ones.)

The thing that puzzles me is that I put all 18 or so plants in the same spot, where they were all in the same soil and got the same amount of water and sun. So why was it that about half of the plants grew reasonably well...

...and the other half stayed roughly the same size they were when I transplanted them, and didn't offer up a single flower?

When it comes to a reliable floral display, I don't like those odds. And I don't think I'll be betting on calendula again.

Zen and the Art of Bean Cultivation

2010-08-05T13:00:00.007-04:00

Clearly I have not yet mastered the art of growing garbanzo beans. The ten-foot row that I planted in the Miami Township Community Garden sprouted and grew well enough at first, but then seemed to get overwhelmed by the lima beans and black beans on either side. Perhaps they didn't like the soil, or the amount of water they got. In any case, the plants produced fewer than two dozen pods, and I wasn't sure exactly when to pick them. The ones that were green had well-formed beans inside them (one per pod), but the beans themselves were green, when I was expecting a nice beige nugget. The brown pods yielded beans of the right color, but they were shriveled and dry, not plump like the green ones. So I tried soaking the dried ones overnight, and voila! They did fill out and looked like what I expected garbanzo beans to look like. But what am I going to do with twelve garbanzo beans? Make a teaspoon of hummus?

I have not picked any of the lima beans yet. From two rows, I can count the number of pods on one hand. They're large, but still almost as flat as snow peas. I'll let them go longer and see what happens.

The black beans, on the other hand, have been a resounding success! As with the garbanzo beans, I wasn't sure exactly when to pick them. I had some green pods and some white pods and some brown pods, and opening all three revealed that the green pods were definitely not ready (some of the beans were still light purple rather than black), while both the white and brown pods yielded many black beauties.

I have not been going out to the community garden as often as I should, so the fact that I can harvest black beans after they have dried on the vine is a big plus in my book. Of all the beans I planted there, the black beans were the most severely attacked by bugs (Japanese beetles in particular), but that didn't seem to hurt their productivity. Of course, they're sort of like shelling peas—even from a lot of pods, you don't get a huge harvest. But just a few cups of organic, home-grown beans are better than none, and sometime this week we'll have black beans and rice for dinner! (Now if only I can figure out how to grow rice...)

Prunella Beneath the Prunus

2010-08-04T12:44:00.006-04:00

When my husband ordered some Prunella 'Freelander' seeds this past spring, I thought they were new to me. "No," he said, "we grew them in New York. You liked them there. Remember?"

Alas, I don't, but I'm going to try really hard to remember them in the future, because he was right—I do like them. They're short, shade-tolerant perennials, with a form like primroses, and flowers like lamium (which makes sense, because they're in the same plant family). Right now I've got them planted around our waterfall and under the plum tree, but their similarity in form to primroses makes me think they would be good companions for the primroses we have growing under the crabapple. That way, we'd have flowers there in both the spring and the summer. (The Prunella started blooming in late June, and are still going.)

Our Prunella plants been flowering in various shades of pink, purple, and blue, along with some white. I've been very pleased with their performance, and this is just their first year! They're supposed to spread, but hopefully won't be too invasive. (They are in the same family as mint, which might be a bad omen...)

Now if I can just walk past them without thinking of the song from 101 Dalmatians: "Prunella De Vil, Prunella De Vil..." They're such nice plants, they don't deserve that!

Eye of the Tigridia

2010-07-24T11:16:00.009-04:00

It makes no sense—I will willingly spend hours deadheading and weeding and performing other routine garden tasks, but I tend to draw the line at growing plants that need to be lifted in the fall. I like dahlias, but won't grow them because I don't want to dig them up and store them over the winter. So when my husband ordered some summer-blooming bulbs from Brent and Becky's Bulbs, I was skeptical. I didn't want to fuss with them. But then I saw my first Tigridia pavonia 'Canariensis'. And I fell in love.

Tigridia has iris-like foliage, but much brighter green. And like iris, the stalks rise up over the leaves and form multiple buds that tend to open in succession. Like daylilies, each flower does not last very long, but oh, what a flower! Even in searing heat, the three large outer petals of 'Canariensis' are a bright butter yellow that shimmer even at a distance. And up close, the smaller mottled interior petals provide an intriguing contrast. Our Tigridia started blooming about two weeks ago, and it's starting to wind down now, but what a show it has been!

Tigridia is only hardy in USDA zones 8, 9, and 10, so I'm either going to have to lift them this autumn, or just treat them like annuals and buy more each year. My husband did put one or two of the bulbs in a pot as an experiment to see if that made it easier to both enjoy them in the summer and store them in the winter. But the ones in the pot have yet to bloom, so I'm thinking that might not be the way to go. But grow them again I must!

Pal Joey

2010-07-21T13:02:00.002-04:00

My husband has a penchant for unusual plants. When we compare notes about the new things we'd like to grow each year, I seldom recognize half of the ones he has chosen. So when he picked Ptilotus exaltatus 'Joey', he was being true to form...or so I thought.

Ptilotus (or Pink Mulla Mulla, or lamb's tail— not to be confused with lamb's ear) is a native to Australia, so it tolerates full sun and drought. It has silvery conical flowers with hot pink tips that are supposed to bloom for months at a time. The ten seeds we started germinated well, and the little plants have been happy enough in the border. I couldn't say exactly when they started blooming, since Joeys don't really have buds, but rather develop their flowers over time. But we'll say it's been about a month now.

When friends visited the yard, we were always sure to point out our exotic little specimen, our botanical adventure, our plunder from down under.

And then the other night as we went out to dinner, we walked past these huge planters filled with petunias and...Joeys! I had never seen them before, and now they were everywhere, the latest "it" plant in container gardening! And to add insult to injury, the ones in the planters were twice the size of ours!

Fortunately, my husband's reputation for cultivating the unusual was exonerated when our garden designers admitted that they had never before seen the Mukdenia that he bought for the cottage garden. So our yard still has a little mystique, even if it's not from the Joeys.

Starlight, Not So Bright

2010-07-17T14:16:00.007-04:00

Several weeks ago, my fellow garden blogger Lona at A Hocking Hill's Garden noted that the Zinnia 'Zahara Starlight Rose' that she got from Stokes didn't look much like the photo in the catalog—it was missing the rose markings promised in the plant's name and catalog pictures. I, too, had been attracted to this new variety, but got my seeds from Park Seed, and had the same problem! In the catalog, they look like this...

In the garden, not so much...

In addition to lacking the rose markings, they're also missing the double rows of petals that I had found appealing.

Don't get me wrong, I still think they're pretty enough. They just weren't what I expected. I guess (gardening) life really is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get!

Daylily Delights

2010-07-08T21:33:00.011-04:00

Several weeks ago, when the daylilies had just started sending up scapes, I went out in the yard to discover that a deer had nipped off more than half of them! I was devastated, but in spite of that damage, this was still a great year for daylilies, and I got pictures of specimens that I hadn't had a chance to photograph last year. (The only one I still have no picture of is King's Cloak—I got to see one or two flowers that weren't eaten, but didn't happen to have my camera with me when they were blooming.)

Anyway, three of the Oakes daylilies whose images I hadn't captured before include Miss Amelia...

...Pardon Me (which is the last of our Oakes daylilies to bloom, and a deeper red than this picture suggests)...

...and Carefree Peach. (I'm not 100% certain that this is Carefree Peach—it might be either Miss Tinkerbell or Pink Playmate. I was bad about labeling them when I planted them. But I'm fairly confident that it's Carefree Peach.)

Another three that were from our daylily-growing friends are Siloam Prissy...

...Ury Winniford...

...and the latest addition to the family, Sunday Gloves. (She's much nicer-looking than this photo suggests—we got her after she had just about finished blooming, so I captured what I could.)

When we ordered some plants from Paradise Garden, they threw in a couple Dublin Elaine daylilies, which look pretty in the catalog. We'll just have to see how they look in the yard next year!

From Bermuda Triangle to Fertile Crescent

2010-07-06T18:28:00.031-04:00

An alternate name for this post could be "Christmas in July", because that's what today feels like. We engaged the services of Garden Room Design to fix up the corner of the yard that we have called the Bermuda Triangle because so often the plants we put there are never heard from again. One of the three Heuchera 'Peach Flambe' bit the dust there, as did two of the three hellebores ('London Fog' and 'Hot Flash'), all three of the Tiarella 'Jeepers Creepers', the Tricyrtis 'Sinonome'—I can't even remember how many plants have gone there to die!

Just a few weeks ago, the only plants still surviving in the Bermuda Triangle were the two remaining 'Peach Flambes', a Brunnera 'Jack Frost' and Helleborus x hybridus 'Mellow Yellow Strain' that were just barely hanging on, and the Philadelphus (mock orange) that we transplanted from the front. Oh, and some weeds and straggly Rudbeckia that we wanted to get rid of.

After today, we now have to call this part of our yard the Fertile Crescent, because it looks so lush and gorgeous!

We kept everything we had (except for the weeds and Rudbeckia), but some of the plants were moved around a little, and we got a boatload of new ones! There's the Euphorbia polychroma 'Bonfire', which should have yellow flowers next spring...

...the Amsonia hubrechtii 'Arkansas Blue Star', which has feathery foliage and bouquets of star-shaped blue flowers in spring...

...the Weigela florida 'Fine Wine', which has burgundy leaves and bright pink trumpet-shaped flowers in spring...

...three Astilbe chinensis 'Pumila', whose pink plumes are just getting ready to bloom...

...and a Lonicera x brownii 'Dropmore Scarlet', which is blooming now.

The Fertile Crescent has dappled shade, so our designer, Monica, included two types of ferns. We have eight Dryopteris 'Brilliance' (Autumn Fern) along the fence, which should provide nice color in the fall...

...and three Athyrium n. 'Pictum' (Japanese Painted Fern), whose leaves have a multi-colored appearance.

Monica also included a couple hostas in the plan. (Hopefully, the deer will leave them alone!) The golden-leafed Hosta 'Autumn Moon' really pops in the shade...

...and Hosta 'Sagae' is a variety that we've grown and loved in the past.

Monica gave us a third Heuchera 'Peach Flambe' (which looks a little more purple than peach, but that just might be new growth)...

...as well as several Heuchera v. 'Caramel', with "reversible" leaves that are caramel/green on top and pink/purple underneath. How charming!

She even indulged my desire for Heuchera 'Snow Angel', which has variegated green and white leaves with long-lasting hot pink flowers in the spring.

Even though we lost one Tricyrtis 'Sinonome' in this area before, how could we resist trying it again? It's orchid-like flowers are so lovely in the fall!

And although I'm not normally a fan of grasses, Monica and her business partner, Betsy, so heartily endorsed Hakonechloa m. 'Aureola' (Golden Japanese Forest Grass) that I decided to give it a try.

Monica also gave our existing hellebore a couple companions in Helleborus o. 'Royal Heritage', which should bloom in late winter/early spring.

We also have several Ceratostigma pumbaginoides (hardy plumbago), which have pretty blue flowers right now (although they had faded a bit by the time I took this picture)....

...as well as some glossy-leaved ginger from Betsy's own garden.

The temperatures have been in the 90s lately, so we're going to be watering these new babies like crazy for the next couple weeks to help them get established. And hopefully these plants will grow so vigorously that they'll be the last ones we ever have to put in that corner of the yard!

Bizarro Beans

2010-06-27T19:04:00.005-04:00

In my plot in the Miami Township Community Garden, I decided to grow some types of beans that not only had I never grown myself, but that I had never seen growing anywhere! In my 4x10' space, I planted two outer rows of 'Fordhood 242' bush lima beans, one inner row of 'Black Turtle' black beans, and one inner row of garbanzo beans.

The weather has been warm and wet, and I've been busy with the plantings in our yard, so it had been a couple weeks since I checked on my plot. As I entered the community garden, off in the distance I saw these tendrils waving in the breeze like the arms of some science fiction creature. And then I realized...those were my lima beans!

Since I bought bush lima beans, I had naturally assumed that they would grow like bush green beans—about 12-18" high. But perhaps in the lima bean world, "bush" means "less than four feet tall."

The black beans looked like I expected, but what were these plants that looked almost like mimosas or polemoniums?

Those, it turns out, are the garbanzo beans! I'm extremely eager to see how these delicate plants produce those big, fat chick peas!

Anyway, it looks like I'm going to have to take my pea fences over there to give the lima beans something to climb on. And I hope that the black beans and garbanzo beans don't end up shaded by the limas—had I known the lima beans would grow this way, I would have planted them on the two inside rows. Yet another garden lesson!

Becky's Back!

2010-06-24T12:27:00.011-04:00

Last year I started some Rudbeckia x hirta 'Cherry Brandy' from seed, and got a few itty bitty plants that were nibbled by bunnies and otherwise didn't put on much of a show. And since it's ostensibly not a perennial (like Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm'), I thought that was all I was gonna get.

Come autumn, I cut back the flower stalks, but left the plants in the ground, just to see what would happen. Many years ago, I gave a friend some Rudbeckia hirta 'Indian Summer', which is also supposedly an annual, but she said it kept coming back year after year. So maybe, just maybe, I thought, my 'Cherry Brandy' would, too.

And it did!

Early in the spring, the plants did sustain some critter damage, but not enough to discourage them from forming beautiful clumps!

I couldn't be happier with its performance in the garden. It started blooming a couple weeks ago, and shows no signs of stopping or even fading. I know that its cousin, Echinacea, provides long-lasting cut flowers, so I really ought to bring some Beckys into the house to enjoy them there as well...

...although the butterflies would miss them.

On a Lark(spur)

2010-06-21T12:39:00.012-04:00

One of my former neighbors had a huge patch of larkspur, which I remembered as a dense mass of airy foliage topped with multi-colored Delphinium-like flower spikes. So this year I decided to give it a try myself. I started Consolida ajacis 'Sydney' from seed, and was very pleased at how vigorously it grew under the lights.

You would think that I would read the package to find out how closely they should be spaced, but I didn't. I had it in my head that each plant would branch, producing several flower spikes per seedling, and therefore should be planted maybe 6-8" apart.

It was a nice theory, but bore no resemblance to reality, at least not so far. My little larkspurs look like isolated specimens rather than the mass planting I had hoped for. Plus, with no support, they do tend to fall over quite a bit. And they're much shorter than the ones I remember my neighbor growing, although hers might have been a different variety.

Still, they are pretty. My seeds were supposed to provide a mix of colors, and there are three of them, but it's like 45% pink...

...45% white...

...and 10% violet. (And by 10% I mean one.)

Oddly, almost all the pink ones are on the left side of the patch, and almost all the white ones are on the right side, along with the lone viloet flower. How did that happen??

Anyway, larkspur is an annual, so pehaps it will self-seed, and next year I'll have enough of them that they'll hold each other up and be a little heartier. I have often found that to be the case with annuals—the ones that self-sow or over-winter do soooo much better than the ones I start indoors. I sometimes wonder if I should forget about starting annuals under the lights, and just direct-sow the seeds in late summer/early autumn and let nature take its course.

Tic-Tac-Toe Gardening

2010-06-18T12:54:00.006-04:00

If Mel Bartholomew can get a whole book out of square foot gardening, then surely I can get a blog post out of my own invention, tic-tac-toe gardening.

It started with my favorite cole slaw recipe, which calls for cabbage and scallions. Last year, I grew just the cabbage, but this year I decided to grow the scallions as well. However, I didn't want to dedicate an entire 4x4' bed to them—the recipe calls for only four scallions per head of cabbage—so what to do?

Well, the book on companion planting that I read this year said that cabbage and scallions grow well together, so I decided to pair them up. And the way I did it was to sow the scallions in four intersecting rows that formed a grid, like in tic-tac-toe. Then I planted the cabbages in the "boxes". (Since cabbage heads are round, I guess they're the O's—not sure what I would use for X's. But perhaps I'm taking the metaphor a bit too far.)

Anyway, it was a whimsical way to create my cole slaw patch!

I Like Big Butterfly Bushes

2010-06-16T22:56:00.010-04:00

One of our best seed-starting success stories has got to be our butterfly bushes. When we added this border in June of 2007, you couldn't even see the nine buddleia that we planted along the back.

By August, they had grown significantly, no doubt thanks to the soaker hoses that we ran constantly throughout that drought-ridden summer. They got almost as tall as the gazing ball.

This year, you can barely see the gazing ball for the buddleia!

Each of the shrubs produces dozens of flowers...

...that look kind of like lilacs...

...and earn their nickname!

'Foxy' Ladies

2010-06-13T14:45:00.006-04:00

The foxglove is beginning to wind down in the garden. We started the seeds for Digitalis 'Foxy' last year, and they bloomed for the first time this year (typical for a plant that's normally a biennial, although I thought this was an annual variety). 'Foxy' is a little on the short side for a foxglove (perhaps only 20 inches tall)...

...but it did end up producing some lovely flowers. There were some pure white stalks...

...a very pale pink...

...and of course the classic purple with its spotted throat.

I've been letting the flowers dry and drop in the hope that they'll do a little self-seeding, and we'll see how many come back next year!

Big on Little Henry

2010-06-08T10:41:00.009-04:00

One thing that I've learned over the years is that any flower border really benefits from having flowering shrubs as well as herbaceous plants. Shrubs typically provide structure and year-round interest, and one that I particularly appreciate is Itea 'Little Henry', also known as sweetspire.

'Little Henry' is a compact, slow-growing shrub that has white flower spikes from mid-May to early June. They look like a mass of fuzzy white caterpillars floating in the air. The flowers are very attractive to bees, who hopefully visit the adjacent veggie garden when they've had their fill of Itea nectar.

And if flowers in the spring weren't enough, 'Little Henry' has spectacular fall color.

What more could you want in a shrub?

Peas-ful, Easy Feeling

2010-06-05T20:55:00.006-04:00

I harvested the last of the 'Sugar Sprint' sugar snap peas today—a variety that I've grown in the past, and it didn't disappoint. The plants are half as tall as the 'Super Sugar Snap' that I planted last year, and yet yielded more. My little 4x4' bed produced just shy of five pounds!

I picked the first three pounds at just the right time, when the pods were 2-3 inches long but hadn't starting filling out, and we're still eating our way through them. I was tardier with the last picking, and they got way too plump, so even though they're intended to be eaten in the pod, I decided to shell them.

I can definitely tell the difference between shelling peas and sugar snap peas! Shelling peas have thin pods that open easily and yield about 8 peas per pod, while sugar snaps fight to keep their 2-4 peas. Still, it's a pleasant experience, sitting out on the back porch, listening to the birds and shelling peas. And an equally pleasant experience eating them!

A Peony for Your Thoughts

2010-05-27T17:33:00.013-04:00

Good things come to those who wait, they say. Case in point: we planted two Peony 'Double Dinner Plate' plants in 2008, and eagerly awaited blooms the following spring. We got one. It was a very nice flower, but I was kinda hoping for a few more.

This year, the plants rewarded our patience with a boatload of buds...

...that turned into magnificent eight-inch blooms!

The biggest problem with herbaceous peonies is that their heavy flowers tend to end up on the ground—a ring of pink around the base of the bushy green plant. One of my neighbors addressed the issue by planting her peonies between her house and a low evergreen hedge—the blooms end up resting on the hedge, but from a distance, you can't really tell that they're not upright. My own peonies are at the end of a border, and the adjacent spirea do hold some of them up a little, but I try to assist with a plant support that consists of a wire circle criss-crossed with a grid. It works in that the flowers end up drooping only halfway down rather than all the way to the ground, but I'm thinking that if I really want the blossoms to be held upright, I'm going to have to provide some kind of support for each individual stem. I might try that next year.

If we had to be patient to see 'Double Dinner Plate' flourish, we had no such wait with our tree peony, 'Shima Nishiki'. I got that for my husband for Father's Day last year, and we really didn't expect to see any flowers from it for another year or two. We were pleasantly surprised when it formed three buds this spring. Two of the flowers were red and white (which is what we expected), but one was solid red.

My husband liked the bicolors...

...but I thought the solid red had a better form.

And of course, with tree peonies, the woody stems hold the flowers much better. No staking needed!

Community Garden Update

2010-05-25T23:16:00.008-04:00

I finally got around to getting stuff planted in my plot at the Miami Township Community Garden. This was the first time I had been back since that rainy Saturday morning several weeks ago when I joined more than a dozen other volunteers to help spread wood chips for the paths between the beds. I was amazed at how good it looks, and pleased to see so many other people there this evening, watering and planting! No point in sharing photos of the dirt in which I stuck my Fordhook lima beans, 'Black Turtle' black beans, and garbanzo beans (along with four extra 'Park's Razzleberry' tomato plants that won't fit into my home bed), but here are a few shots of other people's more established plots.

You really don't get a sense of the scope of the garden from just these pictures, however, so here's a panoramic video of the whole thing. About a half acre is under cultivation, and I'm thrilled at how many gardeners are participating!

Rose Parade

2010-05-20T13:05:00.011-04:00

In spite of the recent deer damage, our 'Constance Spry' rose is putting on quite a show for us. She's not a rebloomer, so it's a good thing the critters didn't eat all her buds, 'cause that would have been the end of it for the year!

'Constance Spry' is a rambler, so by tying her long branches horizontally along the fence, I was able to get her to produce lots of upright stems with buds and blooms.

We're getting a similar effect alongside the screened porch with the climber 'Iceberg'.

And although 'Blanc Double de Coubert' is a hedge rose rather than a rambler or climber, she has gotten tall enough that her flowers also frame the view from the porch.

It's amazing how much she has grown in just two years! Here's how she looked in 2008...

...and here's how she looks now!

Tub o' Spuds

2010-05-18T18:02:00.005-04:00

Growing potatoes in containers seems to be all the rage these days, and I have to admit that we've jumped on the bandwagon. We could have just started some "eyes" from store-bought potatoes, but opted to buy some organic seed potatoes from Gardener's Supply. (I think the thing that convinced my husband to buy them was their pretty flowers!)

I can't fault him for succumbing to marketing, though. I was completely charmed by the packaging—the six different potato varieties were neatly nestled in a box of brightly colored, crinkled paper strips, accompanied by picture postcards describing each variety, growing instructions, and more. It was like getting a present!

We didn't splurge on a potato bag, but instead decided to use a self-watering container that we've had around for several years. It's probably a little too small for all of these spuds, but we'll see how it works out.

The collection includes 'All-Blue', 'Butte', 'Carola', 'Cranberry Red', 'Onaway', and 'Red Cloud'. I didn't write out a chart of what I planted where, so hopefully when harvest time comes, I'll be able to identify everything using the postcards. Can't wait to try 'em!

Oh, Deer!

2010-05-13T08:27:00.010-04:00

I am playing maitre d' to a most unwelcome patron in my yard.

He started with a nice appetizer of Geranium Victor Reiter Jr....

...followed by an delectable mixed salad of Arrowwood Viburnum...

...a sumptuous entree of Clematis Arabella...

...and a dainty daylily dessert. (The one Hemerocallis Bitsy managed to bloom, but there would have been three or four others to the left there, if not for my visitor.)

The garlic that I planted around the roses has flourished...

...but it's clearly no deterrent, as there are just stumps where buds once were!

I've put down more Deer Scram, and am going to spray a blend of eggs, garlic, and hot sauce on some of the plants. I don't know how else to tell my guests that the kitchen is closed!

Herding the Hesperis

2010-05-10T19:33:00.009-04:00

When we grew Hesperis matronalis 'Alba' in New York, I knew from experience that it needed some support to keep it from flopping around willy-nilly in the bed. And yet when the compact clump that I started from seed last year here in Ohio seemed to be hanging together nicely, denial set it. "Maybe it won't need staking after all," I thought to myself.

Wrong!

Once they started blooming, the tall stems stayed upright until the first good rain, and then down they went! Still in denial, I thought they might bounce back once the sun warmed them up.

Wrong again!

Let me tell you (and myself!), it's much easier install supports before the plant has gone all flopsy than it is to try to prop the stalks up with one arm and wrangle support around them with the other. Somehow our linking stakes stayed in New York, so I ended up putting an unused pea fence around the perimeter of the Hesperis. It worked well enough, but it would have been much better if I had done it while the clump was still developing.

Still, it doesn't look bad from a distance, and up close, I'm just looking at the flowers anyway (and enjoying their spicy fragrance!).

It's been blooming for almost four weeks now, and is just now starting to slow down. I seem to have (unintentionally!) set up a sequence of white bloomers along the back of the house—first the lilac, then the Blanc Double de Coubert and Iceberg roses, and now the Hesperis. I love all these plants, but I'm ready for some color back there (besides the faithful wallflower)!

Pruning: (Wo)Man v. Machine

2010-05-07T14:40:00.009-04:00

Last fall, we rationalized that we didn't want to cut back the buddleia (butterfly bush) because we thought the dried flowers would provide winter interest and perhaps seeds for the birds. Then in the early spring we hemmed and hawed about how far back to cut our nine bushes, and then when they leafed out so very nicely, it looked like we really didn't need to cut them back at all.

Except that they were still covered with hundreds of dead flowers.

Sigh.

So one evening a few weeks ago I went out with clippers in hand and proceeded to remove the spent blooms. I later told my husband that it was like trying to paint an entire house with a three-inch paint brush. It took forever, but I finally finished.

We were likewise negligent with the Itea 'Little Henry' (aka Virginia sweetspire) and the Spirea japonica 'Shirobana', and so a few days ago I deadheaded those as well. We only have five of each of those, and they're not nearly as big as the buddleia, so that was only like using a three-inch brush to paint a room rather than an entire house.

And now, as I watch the lilac flowers fade, I realize I'm going to have to go out there and do it again. (Incidentally, this was a fabulous year for the lilac, so I'm going to stick a few pictures in here showing it in full magnificent bloom. If I could embed the fragrance, I would do that, too, because this year the scent was intoxicating!)

But I digress.

For all my complaints about hand-pruning, 'tis a far, far better thing I do than whack at the poor shrubs with an electric trimmer. I will admit that I used to use one on the yews, but it stopped working a couple years ago, and I really haven't felt the impulse to repair or replace it. It addition to the ratcheting hand pruner from Florian that I absolutely could not live without, we did pick up some hedge shears for the yews and ornamental grasses, and that takes care of our needs.

It's just hard to argue with the results. With an electric trimmer, it's really difficult to produce anything other than a box or a globe or some other shape that really doesn't occur in nature. (And yes, you can create that effect with hedge shears, too.) But when you trim by hand, you get rid of all the icky parts, but the plant still looks like it's growing the way it was meant to.

And there's also something to be said for not contributing to suburban noise pollution, or using up finite available energy (other than my own, which is available some days more than others).

So when the lilac is ready, I'll go out there with my hand pruners and clip off the dead stuff. And then later in the season I'll do the same with the roses. And the echinacea. And the...

The Apple of My Iris

2010-05-03T13:16:00.007-04:00

I've got several different types of Iris in the yard—bearded Iris, Siberian Iris, and Iris reticulata—and I'm pleased to have another blooming for the first time. It's a type of bearded Iris, but considerably shorter (about the height of a tulip), and it started flowering before any of my other bearded Iris.

It was a gift from a friend, so I don't know the species, but I couldn't be more pleased with it. It's a cheery lemon color, which provides a little yellow in the garden after the Narcissus have faded. I positioned it between a creeping juniper and the boxwood shrubs that are part of the foundation plantings,and it provides such a nice greeting for folks walking up to the front door.

Although I did plant two rows, it doesn't give quite the impression of depth that I would like, but I'm not complaining! I think they're lovely!

And Then There Were Three

2010-05-02T15:35:00.006-04:00

Many years ago, I read an article by Mel Bartholomew on square-foot gardening, and I heartily embraced the idea. The premise is basically that you can plant one large plant—a tomato, a pepper, an eggplant, a broccoli, a cabbage—in each square foot of your garden. (And smaller plants, like beans and spinach and whatnot, can be planted more closely than the package might suggest.) So a 4x4' raised bed, for instance, should be able to hold 16 large plants.

But last year I had many more eggplants than I could use, and didn't get as many tomatoes as I thought I should have, so I decided to scale back from 16 plants per bed to just nine. (The rationale that I could get more tomatoes from fewer plants was that I figured each plant would get more sunlight if it weren't so crowded, and wouldn't be fighting its very close neighbors for nutrients.)

Since I had nine on the brain, I planted only nine 'Small Miracle' broccoli this year, and at first they appeared to be very happy.

I chose 'Small Miracle' from Park Seed for a couple reasons. One was that it was supposed to mature in only 55 days, which was the fastest of the varieties offered, and I always feel like my spring garden takes way too long and my summer garden gets in late. The other is that it's supposed to produce full-size heads on small plants, which meant I could have done 16 in my 4x4' bed with no problem, but like I said, I had nine on the brain, so nine is what I planted.

I have to wonder now if it would have worked out better if I had planted the 16. Shortly after planting, I noticed that one of the nine was looking rather withered, and closer examination showed that the stem was broken—not sure if it got snapped during transplanting, or if cutworms were at work. But in any case, that was just one, so I still had eight broccoli left to look forward to.

We've had a typical Ohio spring this year—temperatures fluctuating widely, some hard rains, the usual fal-de-rah. And then one day I went out to look at the beds, and another five of the broccoli looked withered, like the one that had been broken. These seemed to have intact stems, but most of the leaves had turned brown. However, the remaining three seemed to be just fine. You'd think that if it were a matter of weather, they all would have been affected. Why would five bite the dust and three seem to thrive, all in the same space?

I left the sad-looking ones in the bed for another week or so, hoping they would bounce back, but they never did. When I pulled them, they seemed to have almost no root system at all—one narrow little tap root, and that was about it.

So I still don't know what caused the problem, but I do know that it'll take a small miracle for me to plant 'Small Miracle' again.

But on the bright side, I will get the green beans in early.

Too Much Thyme on My Hands

2010-04-27T13:03:00.004-04:00

One of the challenges of starting seeds is that you never know what kind of germination rate you're going to get, or how many plants will damp off or otherwise not survive, so it's always safest to start more than you think you'll need. We did that with the thyme this year, had great germination, and now I've got more plants than I know what to do with!

I was going to put six in front of the veggie garden, but ended up putting in nine just because I had them. And I stuck another three in the back bed where there was a good spot for them. So now I have six homeless plants left over, which I'll probably end up offering to friends.

The plants look small now, but I've grown thyme at other homes, and it spreads like crazy! If the neighbors wouldn't care, I would seriously consider having a lawn entirely of thyme rather than grass. You can walk on it without hurting it, it never needs mowing (though it does need clipping if you want to keep it from spreading too far), it smells great, it has dainty pink flowers, and it can be used to flavor food! OK, as a lawn, maybe it wouldn't look great in winter. But does brown grass?

Make Mine a Cosmopolitan

2010-04-24T15:33:00.006-04:00

Lamium 'Cosmopolitan' is one of the plants I grow as much for its foliage as its flowers. Of course, at this time of year, it's kinda hard to see the leaves—it's literally covered with blooms!

I do like Lamium, but I'm not sure if it likes me...or my garden, at least. I planted two last year, and both seemed to be very stressed during the summer. I cut back the one that looked particularly unhappy, thinking that this would encourage more growth in the spring. Wrong! The photos above are of the Lamium that I left alone. Here's a photo of the one I cut back:

No flowers! Not a one! So it's a good thing I like the foliage, huh? I'm going to leave it alone this summer and see if it rewards my negligence with blossoms next spring!

The Odd Find

2010-04-21T22:14:00.007-04:00

It's not unusual for us to find plants we love in the catalogs that arrive in our mailbox, or when we're roaming the garden centers. But sometimes we run across the odd find in an unexpected place. And last week it happened at the hardware store.

Now, I admit that I'm normally fussy about where I buy my plants. I'm usually not impressed with the selection or quality that I find at the big box stores. But there we were, picking up some topsoil and river rocks at the local Lowe's, when we spotted a display of packets of native wildflowers! At about two bucks a pop—cheaper than a cup of coffee in some places!

So how could we resist?

We picked up three Mertensia virginica (Virginia blue bells), which should provide a nice "mirror" on the other side of the sidewalk from the Pulmonaria. And three white Trillium grandiflorum, which we grew before in New York, and really liked. And three red Trillium erectum, which were a novelty. And one Arisaema triphyllum (Jack-in-the-Pulpit).

The root plugs were small, and I'm not sure how many of them will grow. But isn't that the case with everything? What a delight it will be if they take off!

Cincinnati Flower Show

2010-04-18T14:44:00.015-04:00

I used to love the Cincinnati Flower Show. I was proud that my hometown's show is the only one in North America recognized by the Royal Horticultural Society in England, home of the incomparable Chelsea Flower Show. I appreciated the fact that for many years it was held in Ault Park, which was a gorgeous setting replete with its own stunning flower beds. Even when it moved to Coney Island, I enjoyed the ease-of-access and picturesque setting next to Lake Cuomo.

Two years ago, however, the show moved to Symmes Township Park, which is much closer to where I live, but I can't shake the feeling that the event has gone downhill. It didn't help that the website failed to explain that tickets at the gate were seven dollars more than if we had purchased them online, and that the gate did not accept credit cards, so we had to go to a nearby ATM and pay a $3.00 fee for using a different one than our normal bank. That, plus the disorganized parking in the grass field across the street, did not put us in the best mood for the rest of the experience.

It seems like, in years past, the flower and landscaping displays were much more interesting, and you could spend at least as much time looking at them as you could at the various vendor booths. Now it seems like the vendors outnumber the displays, and the show doesn't attract the caliber of professionals that it used to.

They did have a tent with table settings, but most of the designers forgot that these were supposed to incorporate some form of dining, not just put flowers on a table, no matter how creative they might have been, like this homage to the Wizard of Oz.

There were a few nice displays in the three Grand Marquee tents, like this cool blue fountain surrounded by pink flowers.

I did appreciate the cute veggie garden installation.

And there were some whimsical elements, like the pioneer wagon and giant watering can.

But by and large I found it a disappointment, and judging by how few people were in attendance, I don't think I was alone in that assessment. I'm not sure that we'll go again next year, which is a shame, because it used to be one of the highlights of our gardening year.

No Sprouts for You!

2010-04-18T09:59:00.006-04:00

I had mentioned in a couple previous posts that late last summer I planted Brussels Sprouts to see if I could get a fall crop of them, and when that didn't work, I overwintered them to see if I could subsequently get a spring crop out of them. Well, I'm sorry to report that that didn't work, either. We had a bit of extraordinarily warm weather for the past couple weeks, even tying a record 84 degress one day, and the Brussels Sprouts decided they'd had quite enough of that, and went to seed.

My husband is much more a fan of Brussels Sprouts than I am, but I still would have liked to know if I would have found a home-grown batch more palatable. I doubt I'll be trying again any time in the near future.

When Is a Dogwood Blooming?

2010-04-14T12:45:00.011-04:00

Each year, I keep a spreadsheet with information about all of my plants, including when each one started blooming. For most plants, that's pretty easy. There's a bud, and it opens, and that counts as blooming.

But each year I'm puzzled about when to record that the Cornus 'Florida' has started blooming. Technically, the white "petals" around a greenish-yellow center aren't really flowers at all—they're bracts, or modified leaves. The greenish-yellow center is actually the flower!

So it is blooming when I see the little green "cups" form, like tiny tulips?

Or when the bracts have opened up and started to change color, even when they still have a greenish tinge?

Or when they've turned completely white and are easily distinguished from the other leaves?

Or does it not count until those little guys in the middle open up, like this one?

Of course, the exact date that the dogwood starts blooming doesn't really matter. All that matters is that it's finally spring, and this is one beautiful tree!

Vibrant Viburnum

2010-04-08T12:39:00.018-04:00

The Viburnum 'Juddi' has just started to bloom. (I used to pronounce it "Judy", but have since learned that it's pronounced "Jud-eye". Now I can't watch Star Wars without thinking about 'Juddi' knights.)

Anyway—with this particular variety, it's hard to say which I like better: the buds...

...or the blooms.

OK, I guess the blooms have it!

Viburnums are among my favorite shrubs. The very first bush I ever planted was a Viburnum plicatum 'Mariesii' (or doublefile Viburnum), which I adored for its horizontal branching, bright green rugose leaves, and white flowers that looked like a lacecap hydrangeas. Alas, I have no pictures of it, except in my memory!

I don't recall 'Mariesii' as being particularly fragrant, but my next close encounter with a Virburnum was at another home where the previous owner had planted Viburnum carlesii (also known as Korean spice bush). The shrub was somewhat diseased and hadn't been properly pruned in 20 years, but oh, my, when it bloomed, the scent of its flowers was unbelievable!

When we moved to New York, our landscape designer recommended Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur'. It was supposed to have "fuzzy" white flowers in the spring (like a spirea) and nice red foliage with blue-black berries in the fall (if there's both a male and female, which we had), but our plants were small and did not grow enough for us to see them bloom before we had to move again.

Back here in Ohio, besides the 'Juddi', we also have a Viburnum dentatum, which produces a modest flower display in the spring.

I believe it's also supposed to produce blue-black berries in the fall, but I didn't notice any last year. It gets its nickname (arrowwood Viburnum) from the fact that native Americans liked to use its very straight branches for making arrows.

A friend told me that arrowwood Viburnums are supposed to get huge. In their current location in the berm, I really wouldn't want ours to get more than six feet high and wide, so I suppose I'll have keep an eye on them and prune them if necessary. (We might have a more dwarf variety.) So far they seem to grow at a reasonable pace. Our three shrubs were fairly small when we planted them in 2007...

...and last year they were still a manageable size.

My husband has never lived in one place for more than five years, so hopefully we'll be here long enough to see these plants become more mature! (Now that we have 'Juddi' knights, perhaps the force will be with us!)

Colchicum in Spring

2010-03-31T12:55:00.005-04:00

Last fall, I planted Colchicum (autumn crocus) for the first time, and was promptly rewarded with lovely leafless flowers, at least from 'Waterlily'. So it's been interesting to see the flowerless leaves popping up this spring to nourish the bulbs for next fall's display.

They look kinda like short tulip foliage to me.

I'm still not seeing anything from the 'Harlekijn'. I wonder if Wayside would ship us some more 'Waterlily' to replace the 'Harlekijn' that never did anything.

The Great Garlic Gambit

2010-03-25T12:56:00.009-04:00

Having read so frequently about garlic's ability to repel critters (and maybe even reduce black spot), I decided to plant garlic among my daylilies and roses this year, hopeful that I'll lose fewer buds to hungry deer, and lose fewer rose bush leaves to disease. And even if the garlic doesn't help with those challenges, at least I'll have lots of garlic for use in the kitchen.

From what I've read in the catalogs, most garlic is planted in the fall, but John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds did offer a variety that can be planted in the spring. It's called Early Italian Purple, and I was relieved to find out that the garlic cloves themselves are not purple, just the skins that enclose the cloves. And it's a softneck garlic, which means I can make garlic braids, and the heads will keep for longer.

I ordered a pound—about 10 heads, which I broke apart into individual cloves and planted even with the soil, as instructed. (I did consider just buying garlic heads at the store, but they're supposed to be treated with stuff that prevents sprouting—not that I haven't had my share of store-bought garlic sprout in the pantry anyway!)

Given that garlic is supposed to be a critter repellent, I was surprised to go out in the garden a few days later and see about five cloves lying on top of the ground!

Although we are going through a spring thaw, I'm skeptical that this would have been caused by the soil heaving. Could something have dug them up? We don't have squirrels, and I can't imagine a deer or rabbit doing it. Would raccoons? Moles? Mice? The only other possible culprit I can think of is birds. In past years, I've seen freshly planted seedlings torn out and left lying on the ground, and speculated that a bird thought the tiny plants were worms. Now I'm wondering if that little bit of green growth starting to pop from the garlic could have been mistaken for a caterpillar or other bird treat...

...except that the cloves that were pulled up had no green shoot.

I wish I could install cameras in the yard, like they have at intersections, so that I could catch any "moving violations" and take appropriate action to protect the rest of my garlic!

Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along

2010-03-20T11:13:00.017-04:00

When I first heard the rhythmic sound coming from the basement, I thought perhaps someone had left the faucet dripping in the bathroom. But no, it was one of the harbingers of spring, a robin, attacking one of the windows. Tap, tap, tap.

I'll give him credit for this: he certainly is fearless. I walked right up to the window to take his picture (with a flash!), and he still held his ground.

There have been other more pleasant harbingers of spring lately. The Iris reticulata 'Gordon' are blooming...

...as are the Vinca minor (periwinkle).

The buds on the Magnolia 'Jane' are swelling...

...the rose 'Blanc Doublet de Coubert' is leafing out...

...and I can see the buds on the lilac.

I also got all of the spring veggie garden planted. The Cabbage 'Gonzales' and Broccoli 'Small Miracle' are tucked away in their beds (and although you can't see them, there are Scallion 'Parade' seeds planted among the cabbage). I only planted nine of each instead of my usual 16, just to see if more space makes any difference in the size of the produce.

I also planted Spinach 'Renegade' and Peas 'Sugar Sprint', but decided that raised beds full of dirt were not photos worth sharing.

One surprise of the season has been the survival of the Brussels Sprouts 'Catskill' that I planted last August. When the weather got bad, I put a row cover on them and hoped for the best. They look a little beat up by the cold, but they did survive...

...and I do believe those are little sprouts forming at the base of the leaves!

A Good Day to Start More Seeds

2010-03-13T16:02:00.008-05:00

The title of this post begs the question...is there a bad day to start seeds? I suppose I wouldn't want to be doing it in July, but on this particular day in March, with the rain forming a moat around the house, preventing me from leaving...

...it seems like a good day to go downstairs and start some more seeds under the grow lights.

Two weeks ago we started a couple trays that included Antirrhinum majus 'Twinny' (snapdragons), Calendula officinalis 'Citrus Smoothies', Consolida ajacis 'Sydney' (larkspur), Delphinium 'King Arthur' and 'Pacific Giant', Phlox drummondii '21st Century Rose Star', Primula vulgaris 'Giant Bouquet', Prunella 'Freelander', and Rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary), and so far at least one of everything has popped...

...even if some of them are itty bitty, like the rosemary:

Today we started Campanula 'Cup and Saucer' (Canterbury bells), Centratherum intermedium 'Button Beauty', Heliotrope 'Mini Marine', Melampodium paludosum 'Melanie', Osteospermum Asti, Ptilotus exaltatus 'Joey', Thymus vulgaris (thyme), Eggplant 'Park's Whopper', and Pepper 'Karma'. I only had room for 12 peppers, and want to start 16, so I'll start some more when I start the tomatoes in a couple weeks.

The Broccoli 'Small Miracle' and Cabbage 'Gonzales', which I started on February 9, are now out on the back porch, being hardened off. The cabbage (on the right) is considerably larger than the broccoli, but I'm confident the broccoli will catch up.

Next weekend, if the weather cooperates, I'll plant them out in the raised beds, and direct-sow the Spinach 'Renegade', Peas 'Sugar Sprint', and Scallion 'Parade'. It is so wonderful to be able to do these things again!

And we still haven't gotten ordering-mania out of our system. Since I'm going to rent space in the new community garden in my area, I had to get some seeds for that plot, and decided to try some things I've never grown before, like Fordhook bush lima beans, black beans, and garbanzo beans. (Actually, I planted lima beans once about 20 years ago, but the day I went out to the garden and saw nothing but stumps where lovely leaves had been was the day I decided that fencing a veggie garden is a very good idea.) This is also the first time I've ever ordered from Vermont Bean Seed Company, so I shall see how I like their stuff.

My husband was also seduced by the flowering potatoes from Gardener's Supply, which includes 'Red Cloud', 'Cranberry Red', 'Carola', 'All Blue', 'Onaway', and 'Butte', so we're going to try growing those in a container.

Ah, spring...are we there yet?

Color My World

2010-03-04T12:54:00.011-05:00

After a winter that's been way, way too long, it's finally starting to feel like spring again!

The sky is blue instead of gray...

...the narcissus shoots are green...

...the white stuff is disappearing...

...and I'm tickled pink!

Compost Post

2010-02-22T15:36:00.009-05:00

Only a true gardening geek would be thrilled to get a kitchen composting pail for Valentine's Day, and I'm afraid I'm guilty as charged. This little pot from Gardener's Supply is pretty enough that I don't have to hide it under the sink, and it's got replaceable charcoal filters in the lid so that it won't get smelly.

I have always believed in the virtues of composting, and have a compost tumbler that I bought at least ten years ago, but I have not had huge success with it—either I don't have enough materials, or the ratio of green and brown materials isn't quite right, or the materials are not finely shredded enough, or I don't turn the bin often enough, or it's too dry or too moist, or I lack bacterial activators, or whatever.

Undaunted, I'm trying once again this year. I saved a big pile of chopped leaves from last fall, and right now, the tumbler is about a third full of them. As I fill my kitchen compost pail with veggie and fruit trimmings and egg shells and whatnot, I dump them in the tumbler as well. (This proved to be a little difficult the first time around—the lid is heavy and rotates to the bottom, and the leaves that I added last fall had mixed with rain and snow, and froze to the lid, making it quite difficult to open!) In the spring, I'll add grass clippings, and try to turn the bin every day or two to aerate it. In theory, I should end up with a bin full of compost in a few weeks. In theory. Still unproven. But I'll probably keep trying until I end up compost myself!

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

2010-02-20T15:19:00.014-05:00

Anyone who knows my husband knows that he loves to garden, so when his daughter gave him a gift certificate from Wayside Gardens for his birthday, he spent several delighted hours with the catalog, trying to figure out what to get. He finally settled on three plants (and I hope Wayside forgives me for borrowing the photos from their website):

Aconitum carmichaelii 'Cloudy'. Aside from the fact that he liked the look of the flowers, this monkshood has several other features that influenced his decision. It starts blooming in late summer when other flowers have started to fade, thereby extending the garden season; it prefers part to full shade, so we can put in the berm, where we have fewer plants than elsewhere; and it's poisonous, so nothing will eat it.
Dicentra 'Ivory Hearts'. Although my own heart belongs to Dicentra 'spectabilis', we've had such awful luck with it that I suppose if we want a bleeding heart, we have to consider other species, like this one.
Aruncus 'Guinea Fowl'. We have tried (without success) to grow goat's beard from seed, so we shall see if a plant will do better for us. Alan thinks the white plumes will look good next to the Perovskia, and I'm inclined to agree.

Besides these three plants, we also ordered another rose to replace 'Benjamin Britten', which we lost to mites last year. This time we're going to try 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' from David Austin. (The photo here is from their website.)

It seems like we lose a lot of roses in the sunny border: first 'Falstaff' and 'Ambridge Rose', and now 'Benjamin Britten'. This bed really should be a good site for roses, so I'm hoping we will eventually find the right collection that will last for years to come.

The 2010 Gardening Season Officially Begins!

2010-02-17T12:45:00.008-05:00

A few weeks back, before the Midwest became the Great White Way (covered with a thick layer of snow), I saw a few daffodil and hyacinth leaves breaking ground, and I suppose I could have marked that as the beginning of the 2010 gardening season, but nothing says "spring" to me like those first few seedlings sprouting under the grow lights.

I'm actually a little behind schedule this year—I was tardy getting my order in, and therefore tardy in receiving the seeds—but the 'Gonzales' cabbage and 'Small Miracle' broccoli have all germinated.

Even though my new transplant pots are not designed for seed-starting per se, I decided to give them a try for this purpose anyway. The clear covers that I use with my other trays did not fit snugly, but did an adequate job of providing humidity.

The tray ostensibly has a half-gallon reservoir, but I can't honestly tell the difference between this tray and any other tray that I use for seed-starting; they all have channels for extra water. Perhaps the difference is that the capillary mat provides better access to the water in the channels? I'm not certain, but as long as my little plants are happy, I'm happy, too!

Counting Cardinals and Other Feathered Friends

2010-02-14T15:36:00.011-05:00

At the prompting of fellow blogger Kylee at Our Little Acre, I decided to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend.

Next to gardening, watching the birds might be our favorite backyard pastime. We have several different types of feeders to woo different types of guests: a platform feeder for the cardinals and jays, a tube feeder for the chickadees and purple finches, a mesh feeder for the goldfinches, a suet feeder for the woodpeckers (like the Downy Woodpecker in this picture), and so forth.

Most of the feeders are within view of the kitchen table, and as we have breakfast or dinner, we look over periodically to see who's joining us for the meal. Doing the count, however, was a rather different kind of experience. Instead of just fleeting glances, I had to focus for at least 15 straight minutes at what was happening outside my window. I pulled up a comfy chair, dusted off the binoculars, dug out the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds, and carefully tried to identify exactly what types of birds were out there, and how many of each.

Some species, of course, are easy to tell. Since the cardinal is the state bird of Ohio, I think I'd be deported if I didn't recognize that pretty boy.

For others, I had to look more closely. Did that sparrow have a white throat or a black one? Was its breast plain or speckled? I must admit that, even with the field guide in hand, I don't think I could tell a Carolina Chickadee from a Black-Capped Chickadee at 25 feet away, especially when they come and go so quickly. But I did the best I could.

And then there was the counting part. When there's just one or two of the same species at the feeder, counting is easy. But when you're suddenly engulfed by a flock of starlings who won't sit still while you do your sums, it can get a little tricky. I was able to say with confidence that at one point I had 18 starlings fussing and fighting over the suet. But if they had descended en masse like they did earlier in the season, it would have been like trying to count the grains of sand on the beach.

Anyway, here are the highest number of each species from my two counting sessions:

European Starlings - 18
Northern Cardinal - 6
Mourning Dove - 3
Song Sparrow - 3
Chipping Sparrow - 2
Purple Finch - 2
Carolina Wren - 1
Downy Woodpecker - 1
Blue Jay - 1
Dark-eyed Junco - 1
Carolina Chickadee - 1
American Goldfinch - 1

I was a little disappointed not to have seen the red-bellied woodpecker or tufted titmouse that usually visits, but even if I couldn't count them for the event, they still count with me!

Taking Blooms Where We Can Get 'Em

2010-02-09T18:45:00.008-05:00

I've mentioned before that one of my husband's gardening goals in life is to have something in bloom in the yard every month of the year, which is pretty ambitious (if not downright delusional) when you live in USDA zone 6. This year he harbored the hope that our new hellebores might bloom in January, but it did not happen. The only flowers we saw that month were on our windowsill: the paperwhites...

...and the amaryllis...

...and the kalanchoe...

...and the primrose.

Although we're fairly adept at growning plants outdoors, we are abysmally bad at growing houseplants, and the little primrose has been a "canary in the coal mine" for me. When its leaves start to wilt, I know that I need to water everything!

Anyway, a few weeks back, when I was out and about, I spied some galanthus (snowdrops) in bud, and thought that perhaps if we planted a few bulbs in a sheltered part of our yard next fall, and had a few warm days at just the right time, then we might actually have something blooming in our yard in January 2011.

And if not, maybe the kalanchoe will still be alive by then, and blooming on our windowsill. But given my track record, I wouldn't count on it.

Community Garden Update

2010-02-06T10:52:00.005-05:00

When you plant a garden on your own, you never have to worry about things like whether your cantaloupe will encroach on someone else's green beans, or whether your corn will block the light from reaching someone else's peppers. So it was interesting to sit in on my first committee meeting with eight fellow gardeners to discuss how to move forward with a community garden and figure out how we can all just get along.

I had initially thought that the garden was going to be in a local park. It turns out that it's going to be adjacent to the Miami Township Civic Center, which is not quite a park, but certainly is public space. In fact, when I went there to attend the meeting, I was surprised to see how many cars were in the parking lot, and how many folks were there to attend various classes and activities. So the garden will certainly have visibility.

About an acre of land has been set aside for this effort, although we might prepare only half of that the first year. At the first committee meeting (which I missed), there apparently had been talk of raised beds (my own favored way for growing veggies), but at the meeting I attended, they ended up opting for a simpler solution: four-foot-wide rows with paths in between. Each row would be subdivided into eight-foot plots, which I assume we would mark out with stakes and twine.

You can't put a bunch of gardeners in a room without some lively discussion. Should the rows run north-south or east-west? How wide should the paths be? What kinds of amendments should we add to the soil? What's the best way to install the deer fencing? Will we allow the use of hoses to bring water from the nearby building, or have folks haul watering cans? What do we do if someone allows their plot to get too weedy? Do we permit perennials?

Aside from the practical concerns, we also had the opportunity to dream a little. How can we provide information about the virtues of organic gardening and composting? How can we share some of the land (or our produce) with folks in need? How can we help people who might be growing a garden for the very first time? It was perhaps during these moments that we realized that a community garden was as much about community as it is about gardening.

Pot Luck

2010-01-29T12:44:00.006-05:00

When it comes to ordering seeds, I'm sometimes torn between sticking with old favorites that have proven their value, and trying new things that dangle the promise of being even better. But when it comes to starting seeds, I often don't give a second thought to changing my processes. I've tried several different techniques, and have settled into a comfortable routine.

Or so I thought.

When I was paging through a recent Gardener's Supply catalog, their self-watering transplant pots caught my eye. (This picture is from their website.)

These trays are not designed for seed starting per se; they have no clear cover, which provides the warmth and humidity so helpful in aiding germination. But they offer several features that are lacking in my standard plastic cells. For one thing, they look a little sturdier. Even though a tray of plastic cells is only about $7, I do reuse mine year after year, and they show the wear and tear that comes with wriggling out the little seedlings each season. And when one or two cells split, it's not worth keeping the whole 6- or 9-cell pack. So sturdy is good.

The transplant pots are also self-watering—the bottom of the tray holds a reservoir of water, and a special capillary mat is supposed to wick up the water from the reservoir and make just the right amount available to the pots. So no worries about watering too much or too little (as long as I remember to keep the reservoir full!).

I also like the fact that each little pot is a separate container. I've gotten fairly good at extracting one seedling from a 6- or 9-cell pack without dumping all of the others willy-nilly, but it will be nice to be able to work with one seedling at a time and not worry about its neighbors.

Of course, having 40 separate containers will also make it easier to get plants mixed up. Currently, I plant only one type of seed in each 6- or 9-cell pack, and I use a single flag for the whole pack. With separate containers, I can just see me moving this pot over here and that pot over there, and suddenly not being able to identify which pot contains what. But maybe I'll come up with an easy method for marking them.

Finally, I'm hoping these pots will be easier to clean—maybe even dishwasher safe? Washing out all my plastic cell packs is one gardening chore that I do not enjoy, and it also contributes to their wear and tear.

So this year I'll try something new, and will see if I have luck with these pots!

A Community Garden Sprouts

2010-01-24T16:15:00.005-05:00

A while back, I wrote a post bemoaning the fact that I wished I had more space for growing veggies, and that community gardens were few and far between. Well, apparently I wasn't the only one thinking about that, because the recreation director for our township recently announced the formation of a steering committee to transform some local park space into...you guessed it...a community garden!

I've been struggling with a nasty sinus infection for the past few weeks, so I wasn't able to attend the committee's first meeting, but I was so encouraged to read the minutes. Fifteen people volunteered their knowledge and time to help get the garden off the ground (or into the ground, as the case may be). They're talking about getting fencing donated, and setting up rain barrels to provide access to water, and composting...it's very exciting!

I'm hoping to be well enough to attend the next meeting, and will no doubt write more about this endeavor in the future!

This Year's Line-Up

2010-01-17T11:06:00.011-05:00

My husband called this past weekend our "fantasy weekend"—the weekend when we order seeds, and fantasize that our gardens will look like the ones in the catalogs. As always, some things will work, and some won't. So in addition to the seeds we got from Butchart Gardens and Smith and Hawken, here are the flowers we ordered from Park Seed:

Antirrhinum majus 'Twinny' (a peach-colored double snapdragon)
Calendula officinalis 'Citrus Smoothies'
Centratherum intermedium 'Button Beauty' (Brazilian button plant)
Consolida ajacis 'Sydney' (larkspur)
Heliotrope 'Mini Marine'
Melampodium paludosum 'Melanie'
Osteospermum 'Asti' (lavender African daisies)
Phlox drummondii '21st Century Rose Star'
Prunella 'Freelander'
Ptilotus exaltatus 'Joey' (pink lamb's tail)
Zinnia 'Zahara Starlight Rose'

This is the first time in a long time that I haven't ordered cosmos, but I've been disappointed in their performance the last couple years, and decided to take a break and see if something new will do better in their place.

For the veggie garden, I got these:

Bush bean 'Jade'
Broccoli 'Small Miracle'
Cabbage 'Gonzales'
Cucumber 'Salad Bush'
Eggplant 'Park's Whopper'
Peas 'Sugar Sprint'
Pepper 'Karma'
Scallion 'Parade'
Spinach 'Renegade'
Tomato 'Margherita'
Tomato 'Park's Razzleberry' (a bonus seed)
Tomato 'Supersweet 100'

I've grown the 'Jade' bean and 'Sugar Sprint' sugar snap pea before, and really liked them, so I decided to get them again. Sometimes it's hard to decide whether to try new things or stick with the tried-and-true.

I'm almost apprehensive about the 'Park's Whopper' eggplant because the catalog says this variety produces 50% more eggplant than 'Black Beauty', which is what I grew last year, and I had more eggplant than I could use! But I do have several eggplant recipes that I love, and perhaps this year I'll actually get around to freezing the extras.

The one thing that I didn't order from Park Seed was garlic, which I plan to plant around the roses and among the daylilies as a deer deterrent. A half pound of 'Early Italian Purple' from Park costs 33% more than a full pound of the same variety from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, so guess where I'm buying it? (Aside from this, I do like Park Seed. I think the beating they take in the ratings at Dave's Garden is a little harsh.)

I'm on the fence about whether to order a potato bag from Gardener's Supply. As my husband correctly points out, we're terrible at remembering to water potted plants. So I'm not sure whether to have faith in the possibility that I might take better care of them, or concede that old habits die hard.

The Joy of Grow Lights

2010-01-14T17:49:00.023-05:00

A friend recently asked for my advice about grow lights, and I thought I'd go ahead and share my experiences here.

I've been an ardent fan of grow lights ever since I bought my first tabletop model about 20 years ago from Gardener's Supply.

They're virtually essential for ensuring that tall plants started indoors from seed (like tomatoes) don't become spindly, and extremely helpful for good germination rates and overall seedling health.

My husband's first set of grow lights were just fluorescent shop light fixtures that he bought from a hardware store and suspended from his basement ceiling with chain link. When we got married, we splurged on a free-standing three-tier light (also from Gardener's Supply), which we absolutely love.

There's a wide variety of options out there, so how do you choose the right grow light system for you?

Size matters. Obviously, you have to consider how many seedlings you plan to start. My tabletop system holds two Jiffy seed trays, which have 72 cells each; the three-tier system holds six trays. That sounds like a lot, but you also have to take into account whether or not you're going to be potting up any of your seedlings. For example, those same Jiffy trays only hold 18 3.5-inch pots, which is what I use for my tomatoes and peppers as they get bigger. So you have to figure out how much space you need for the number and type of seeds you plan to start.

You also have to pay attention to dimensions. For example, the Garden Condo from Park Seed has trays that are only 17x12 inches, which means my 22x11-inch Jiffy trays wouldn't fit there! If you have any existing seed-starting materials, you'll want to make sure they work with whatever grow light you purchase, or you'll end up having to buy new trays and whatnot to go with your lights.

Height is another dimension to consider. My three-tier grow light has only about a 10-inch clearance before the seedlings start bumping into the lights. When they get that large, I move them to the tabletop light, which has a 20-inch clearance.

Speaking of size—when we bought our three-tier system, it came in flat boxes, and we assembled everything down in the basement where we planned to keep the light. When we were packing up the moving van to go to New York, we were startled to discover that the stand was too big to make it up the basement stairs, which had a low ceiling! The movers were kind enough to help us disassemble the light enough that we could get it on the truck! Not something you normally have to think about, but you never know...

Shedding some light. Many grow light systems accommodate standard fluorescent bulbs that you can get at a hardware store, which are OK, but plants really do prefer full-spectrum bulbs, which do cost a bit more. Be aware of what size bulb the system takes—for example, the new T5 bulbs are narrower than T8 bulbs, and they can't be used interchangeably without an adapter. I've read a lot of contradictory information about which is better for plants. Whatever system you prefer, just make sure that you can easily get replacement bulbs.

How much will grow lights increase your electric bill? If you want to know exactly, multiply the number of bulbs by the bulb wattage and the number of hours that you run them, and divide by 1000. That will give you the number of kilowatt-hours of electricity that they use. Then check your electric bill for the cost of each kilowatt-hour, and multiply the number of kilowatt-hours you're using by the cost of a kilowatt-hour. For example, my tabletop system has two 32-watt bulbs, which we run for 8 hours a day, 30 days a month, so that would be (2 x 32 x 8 x 30)/1000, or 15.36 kW/hr per month. My buddies at Duke Energy charge about 13 cents per kilowatt hour, so that system costs about $2 per month to operate. Such a deal!

The feature attraction. Other qualities to look for in a grow light? It absolutely must be possible to raise the lights (or lower the tray) as the seedlings grow; you'll want to keep the lights about an inch above the plants throughout their indoor life. And the easier it is to do that, the better, especially if you find that you need to raise the lights to be able to water.

My tabletop light has knobs on either end that tighten or loosen against a rubber ring, allowing the light fixture to slide up and down along a rail. I find this awkward, because I have to brace the light with one arm while I loosen the knob with the other hand, then raise or lower the fixture and retighten the knob, and then do the same thing on the other side. I don't bother making these adjustments for watering, and just slide the tray out instead.

My three-tier light has a pulley system, which is extremely easy to use. The beaded chain runs from the outside of the frame through the top of each brace from which the lights are suspended, and they're held in place by a plastic gripper. The only problem I've ever had with these is that, when I've disassembled the system, I've sometimes dropped the S-hooks and small suspension chains into the light fixture body, but I was always able to fish them out.

Incidentally, do you notice that on both of these, the fixture includes "wings" to direct the light down instead of letting it just shine out the sides? Nice feature. It's also handy that I can adjust each side individually. Not all plants get the same size at the same time, so I sometimes put my tall seedlings at one end and my short seedlings at the other, and then make the lamp slope. Not all systems allow that.

Some systems come with built-in shelves or trays, some are no more than a stand with a light. Just recognize what you're getting, and how that will affect your own seed-starting practices and preferences.

For seed-starting, you really don't need to worry about the aesthetics of the system (unless you plan to keep it in your living area—for the basement, who cares?). But you might want to consider sturdiness. You'll want something that will last for years.

Other bells and whistles. If you're going to bite the bullet and buy a grow light, you might want to consider a few other gadgets that will enhance your experience. For example, we use timers on our lights so that we don't have to worry about turning them on and off each day.

Another handy gizmo is a heat mat. I went for many years without one, and was pleasantly surprised at the better, faster germination rates that I got once I did buy one. (Remember what I said about size mattering? When we bought our heat mat, we forgot to check its dimensions, and ended up with one that's square rather than rectangular, so unused mat sticks out from under the tray. Ah, well.) Although we have room for eight trays, we have only one heat mat, and we use it only with seeds that require temperatures above 70 degrees Fahrenheit to germinate (like tomatoes and peppers—the seed packet should have the preferred germination temperature on it). And if we have more than one trayful that require warmth, we wait until the first tray germinates, move it elsewhere, and then use the mat with the second tray. It just takes some coordination.

I've never understood why hardware stores and garden centers typically don't carry grow lights. Are we seed-starters that small a market? Besides Gardener's Supply and Park Seed, I saw some systems at Burpee, Home Harvest Garden Supply, Buyplantlights.com, Indoor Gardening Supplies, and Birds-N-Garden. So they are out there. You just have to dig to find them. But we gardeners are good at that.

Forgotten Seeds

2010-01-06T12:23:00.006-05:00

With the seed catalogs coming in fast and furious now, I find it easy to get carried away with my wish list. The pictures are so enticing—wouldn't that delphinium look great in the back bed?

"Don't we already have delphinium seed?" my husband asked. Why, yes, we do! I had completely forgotten about all of the seeds that we picked up when we visited Butchart Gardens last September:

Delphinium 'Pacific Giant'
Delphinium 'King Arthur'
Campanula 'Cup and Saucer'
Primula vulgaris 'Giant Bouquet'
Tithonia rotundifolia 'Torch'

I had also forgotten about the seeds we picked up at Smith and Hawkin's "going out of business" sale:

Nasturtium 'Vanilla Berry'
French Rosemary
Thai Basil 'Queenette'
Italian Pesto Basil
English Thyme
Nigella 'Bridal Veil'
Sunflower mix

The herbs are going to go around the border of the veggie garden, in part since that just makes sense from a culinary perspective, and in part because herbs are supposed to discourage bad bugs and critters.

My husband's secret plan for the sunflower mix is to plant them in the field behind our house...not our property, but it's just overgrown grasses and weeds, so who could object to some sunflowers out there? Surely the birds won't!

Gotta Love Foxglove

2010-01-01T11:35:00.008-05:00

We have had a couple inches of snow so far this winter (now gone), and some very cold temperatures (down into the teens), so I am pleased to still see a little spot of emerald green out on the berm.

This bright patch of color in an otherwise dreary bed is Digitalis purpurea 'Foxy'. Thompson and Morgan, where I got the seed, lists it as an annual, although they acknowledge that if it is not planted soon enough in the spring, it will simply develop leaves and then bloom the next season, which sounds like biennial behavior to me. I grew this variety of foxglove many years ago, and remember it coming back year after year, although in my admittedly faulty memory, the new stalks seemed to sprout from the original clump of foliage rather than new ones, like a perennial. So we'll see how it grows this time around.

The challenge in starting foxglove from seed is that you practically have to be a microbiologist to do it. The seeds are so tiny! One sneeze, and the 1500 seeds in the packet will be just so much dust in the air. But once you get them in touch with the soil, they do germinate easily.

I grew an annual/biennial foxglove in New York as well (don't recall which variety), where it flourished in the dappled shade. I do think it's one of the loveliest flowers, even if it is poisonous.

Back there I also grew Digitalis x mertonensis 'Strawberry Foxglove', which was a perennial variety, but I was not impressed with it. It just didn't seem as lush or pretty as other types.

My fondest foxglove memory, though, was seeing it growing by the side of the road outside of Seattle. What a wonderful wildflower! It was almost enough to make me consider relocating!

2009 No Shows (or Not Much to Shows)

2009-12-29T11:10:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-26T17:28:00.004-05:00

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!

2009-12-21T13:39:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-19T14:31:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-16T12:44:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-13T14:03:00.006-05:00

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?

2009-12-06T15:13:00.005-05:00

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.

Top Ten Bloomers

2009-11-27T12:02:00.005-05:00

In addition to beauty, one of the qualities I value in flowering plants is a long blooming season. As the year winds down, I thought I would share the top ten bloomers in my yard. (Yes, I actually keep a spreadsheet that calculates the number of days between the first and last flowering date!)

Helianthus. Only two annuals cracked the top ten, and the simple sunflower was one of them. The variety that grows in the veggie garden self-seeds, and I think this gives it a better head start than the ones I plant manually. For whatever reason, I was enjoying its sunny blooms from late June until mid-September (85 days).
Echinacea purpurea. I'm fairly sure that 'Magnus' started before 'White Swan' and 'Rubinstern', but 'Magnus' and 'Rubinstern' look so similar that I'm not sure which ended first. In any case, I had echinacea from late May until late August (91 days). In addition to being long-lasting in the garden, they also last remarkably long as cut flowers.
Lonicera 'Graham Thomas'. I officially recorded 'Graham Thomas' as having bloomed only from late May to late August (94 days), but honestly, even after that, I occasionally saw a stray flower or two. This past summer, I saw a bicolor lonicera that I would love to have, and I'll see if it's as prolific as 'Graham Thomas'.
Hibiscus trionum. Some bloggers have written that this annual is a noxious weed (it self-seeds like crazy); others have said that it's hard to catch it blooming. But I fortuitiously put it in a spot where it has natural boundaries and can't spread too much, and I can't complain of its being too shy. I regularly had flowers from late June until late September (97 days), and the plant itself stayed green until late November. The foliage isn't spectacular, but I do like the flowers.
Buddleia. We have nine of these large plants, which put out hundreds—maybe even thousands—of flowers between late June and late October (123 days), much to the delight of the butterflies. There are way too many blooms to keep up with deadheading, and besides, the spent flowers provide some winter interest and possibly seeds for the birds. We cut the whole shrub back in the spring, and that will have to suffice for garden tidiness.
Platycodon grandiflorus. I think that regular deadheading is what kept my platycodon flowering for so long. I had thought that, after starting in mid-June, it was done in September, but then after a thorough deadheading, it turned around and put out another four weeks of flowers, gracing the garden until the end of October (127 days).
Clematis 'Arabella'. This was the surprise of the season. 'Arabella' got bady eaten the first year I planted it, and didn't seem to do much of anything the second year, but it must have been developing a phenomenal root system, because what a performance this year! 'Arabella' doesn't put out any tendrils to help it climb, so it needs training and support (it barely got four feet high this year), but it bloomed continuously from mid-May to mid-October (147 days).
Roses. I almost didn't include roses in this list because they don't bloom continuously—they go for a few weeks, stop for a few weeks, on and off throughout the spring, summer, and fall. But since about a dozen of my roses do manage to bloom for more than 100 days, with three going more than 170, I really couldn't slight them. 'Iceberg', 'Blanc Doublet de Coubert', and 'Abraham Darby' are the standouts in this category. ('Iceberg' actually lasted slightly longer than my #2 plant, but I decided to average the roses as a category. Besides, 'Iceberg' is in such a sheltered spot that anything is going to bloom longer there.)
Geranium 'Rozanne'. This amazing plant started flowering on May 28 this year, and is still going! More than 180 days of non-stop, trouble-free flowers! Gotta love it!
Daphne 'Beulah'. I always hesitate to trumpet the virtues of this plant, because it has such a reputation for fickleness, but I love our Daphne! Beautiful variegated leaves, dainty bouquets of the most fragrant white flowers that last from early April until, well, more than 200 days and counting—I don't know what more I could ask of a plant. Daphne is always number one with me.

So there you have it! I'm eager to see if any new plants that I grow next year will crack the top ten!

Hues of Huechera

2009-11-20T12:38:00.010-05:00

You would think that, when we lived in the shade in New York, I would have discovered Heuchera (coral bells), but I never tried any until last year, and I have to admit that I'm hooked!

My husband had originally planted some Physocarpus 'Summer Wine' under the white birch out front, but the competition was too much for them, and we ended up transplanting them elsewhere in the yard. But we liked the contrast of the maroon leaves with the birch's white bark, and decided to see if some Heuchera 'Mocha' would be a good replacement. Was it ever! It has delicate white flowers in June, but the main attraction is the leaves, which form nicely rounded mounds from practically the first snow melt until the next snow fall.

Encouraged by our success with 'Mocha', we put some 'Peach Flambe' in front of the river birch in the Bermuda Triangle (that corner of the yard where plants go to die), and they seem quite content there. We didn't get any flowers from them this year, but we'll see what (if anything) we get next year. Even if they don't bloom, their foliage brings such an unusual color to the garden, and really pops in the dappled light!

Although I know I shouldn't covet, I have to admit that one of my neighbors has a Heuchera that I simply must have! It's got pale green variegated leaves and gorgeous neon pink flowers that bloom profusely for weeks on end. She tells me it's called 'Snow Angel', and come spring I plan to call every nursery in town until I find it and make it my own!

Transplant Time

2009-11-12T12:35:00.010-05:00

I usually pride myself on positioning plants with their mature size in mind so that I don't have to shuffle things around later. Still, I sometimes forget how well flowers grow! Since autumn is a good time for transplanting, I ended up moving several daylilies that were being engulfed this past summer by the Coreopsis 'Zagreb' and Physocarpus 'Diablo', as well as the Monarda didyma 'Panorama Red Shades' that was bumping up against the bottom leaves of the paw-paw...

...and the Philadelphus that was getting lost amid the branches of my gargantuan Geranium 'Rozanne' (which is still flowering!). Here's the Philadelphus when it was blooming in the spring; it has its "hands up" because it knows it's about to be surrounded!

The daylilies and Monarda stayed in the same bed, just a few feet away from their original positions, so I'm not too worried about them handling the move. (I'm particularly keen to see how the Monarda does—it's going to get a little more sun in its new spot, and when I dug it up, I was stunned at how wide the root ball was, and how many little green shoots were forming for next year!)

But I am concerned that I might have consigned the Philadelphus to its demise. There really wasn't a spot for it in the front bed where it had been doing nicely, so I moved it to the back corner of our yard that we call "The Bermuda Triangle" because so many of the plants we have put there have disappeared...the Onethera, the Hellebores, the Tiarella. The triangle is anchored by a river birch, so it's possible that some of the losses have been due to competition for water and nutrients. Still, it doesn't seem that inhospitable an area—the Heuchera 'Peach Flambe' and Brunnera 'Jack Frost' seem happy there. So we'll see if the Philadelphus keeps afloat or needs a rescue boat!

More Harvest Totals (Cha-Ching!)

2009-11-04T12:12:00.008-05:00

My husband likes to tease me about growing hundred-dollar tomatoes. And yes, when we put in the veggie garden, I did splurge on a few things that I could have gotten for less. For example, in previous years, I made my raised beds with 2x6" timbers from the local hardware store that I nailed together myself. But after watching those warp and split after a season or two, I indulged in somewhat expensive composite lumber with corner anchors.

And of course there was the cost of removing the old shrubs, stripping the sod, installing the wire mesh fence (with a decorative iron gate and front panels to please the neighbors), and buying compost, organic fertilizer, row covers, and seeds. Not to mention the repair work for the sprinkler system pipes that I broke when I drove in the stakes for the fence. (I'm not couting the cost of tools that we use elsewhere in the yard, although I suppose I could throw in the hoe.)

But for all that...I still think my veggie garden saves money in the long run. Having just posted my harvest tallies, I decided to estimate what that produce would have cost at the store:

16 cabbages @ $.99 each: $15.84
15 cauliflower @ $1.99 each: $29.85
4.5 lbs. of sugar snap peas @ $1.99/lb: $8.95
35 lb. of tomatoes @ $.96/lb: $33.60
36 cucumbers @ $.88 each: $31.68
28 red peppers @ $1.50 each: $42.00
38 hot peppers @ $.15 each: $5.70
10.5 lbs. of green beans @ $.99/lb: $10.40
33 eggplants @ $1.69 each: $55.77

Total savings: $233.79

Having organic home-grown veggies to serve my family and friends: priceless!

Harvest Totals

2009-11-02T12:35:00.023-05:00

It might be a little premature to tally up this year's veggie harvest numbers—for the first time ever, I planted a fall crop of Brussels sprouts, which are still hanging in there—but I'm not incredibly optimistic that those will yield anything, so here are the results for 2009 from my six 4x4' raised veggie beds:

Cabbage. Of the 16 'Earliana' that I planted, I harvested 14 heads, some on the medium/small side, but I was generally pleased with them. I have an Asian slaw recipe that requires cabbage and scallions, so next year I think I'll plant only 12 cabbage plants and 48 scallions so that I'll be able to use all home-grown ingredients in my slaw.
Cauliflower. The 16 'Early White Hybrid' plants produced 15 heads. Four were large and tight, but the rest were looser than I would have liked, so next year I'm going to try a different variety as well as watch them more closely and pick them sooner than I did this year.
Sugar snap peas. I did without shelling peas this year, but will never do without sugar snap peas! One 4x4' bed of 'Super Sugar Snap' yielded 4 lbs. 11 oz. of pods—about a pound less than 'Sugar Sprint' produced in 2008. 'Super Sugar Snap' also grew too tall and got knocked over by the wind, so next year I'll either go back to 'Sugar Sprint' or try a different variety.
Tomatoes. Four plants each of 'New Yorker', 'Ponderosa Pink', and 'Saucy', along with three 'Juliet' and one 'Small Fry Hybrid', produced 34 lbs. 13 oz. of tomatoes, and I could count on one hand the number I lost to blossom end rot. That's just about four pounds more than 2008, when I grew 'Applause Hybrid', 'La Rossa', and 'Sweet Baby Girl', and lost dozens to blossom end rot. I definitely will not grow 'Small Fry Hybrid' again (too fragile) nor 'New Yorker' (not all the plants produced the same kind of fruit!). I might stick with 'Saucy' or go back to 'La Rossa' for my paste tomato, or maybe I'll try something new next year. Depends on where I buy most of my seed.
Cucumbers. I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of these! I direct-seeded 'Bush Champion' in my bed, and didn't count how many sprouted, but I got 36 cukes, which was less than half of what I got from 'Park's Bush Whopper II' in 2008. There were a number of variables besides the variety—the weather, direct-seeding vs. starting the plants indoors, using a trellis vs. letting the vines wander on the ground, larger sunflowers blocking more light than last year, etc. Still, 'Bush Champion' didn't perform as well as I think it should have, and I won't be growing it again.
Peppers. I started 12 'Fat N Sassy Hybrid' peppers, but two didn't make it, and I replaced them with two 'Red Bell' pepper plants from Lowe's. I also planted four 'Volcano' peppers that I started from seed. From these, I got 28 sweet peppers and 38 hot peppers. The sweet pepper production was less than previous years, which could be attributed to the cool, wet weather or too much shade from the adjacent sunflowers.
Green beans. The 'Tenderpick' beans yielded 10 lb. 6 oz. of delicious bounty. I liked these plants much better than the 'Festina' that I grew last year, and might grow them again, although in past years I have also very much liked 'Jade'. Decisions, decisions.
Eggplant. I had originally planted 16 'Burpee Hybrid' eggplants, but only seven of them survived. Still, those seven plants produced more than 33 eggplants (and I'm not even counting the ones that were too small to eat at the end of the season). I'm ashamed to admit that I had to discard several of them because I never did get around to freezing them quickly enough. The last one we ate was tough and seedy, probably a result of being left on the vine too long, and that was also a disincentive for preserving the last of the harvest. Still, I really enjoyed growing and cooking with them, and will shoot for nine plants next year—they get fairly large, and in spite of my being a fan of square-foot gardening, I think 16 would be too crowded.

If I do harvest any Brussels sprouts, I'll post about it, but don't hold your breath! (I wonder if the plants might overwinter and then produce in the spring? No harm in leaving them in the bed to find out!)

The Genus Formerly Known as Lisianthus

2009-10-30T13:05:00.007-04:00

As a gardener, I should be used to change. Seasons change. Plants change. But when I opened my Thompson and Morgan seed catalog and saw that Lisianthus is now called Eustoma, I was taken aback. Who made that decision? I recall no memo to that effect.

We didn't grow Lisianthus this year, and our luck with it has been hit-and-miss. Some years, it would come back again and again, even though it's ostensibly an annual. Other years, the seedlings we transplanted to the garden did nothing. But when it does bloom, it is lovely—literal bouquets of purple, pink, and white flowers.

Obviously, it needs more staking than I gave it.

Perhaps next year I'll try again, and see if the new name is a change for the better.

Volunteer Spirit

2009-10-26T20:49:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure how Pulmonaria propagates itself, but while I was doing fall clean-up in the yard, I noticed a "volunteer" Pulmonaria 'Samurai' not far from the mama plant!

I absolutely love this plant, and would like to move the "baby" to another location so that I can enjoy my Pulmonaria in multiple places, although I'm not sure when it will be established enough to transplant. We'll see how it looks in the spring!

Cheeky Colchicum

2009-10-22T12:45:00.006-04:00

For Father's Day, my husband's daughter gave him a gift certificate from Wayside Gardens (does she know him or what?), and he decided to try something we've never grown before: Colchicum (also known as autumn crocus).

The only fall-blooming bulb that I was familiar with was Lycoris, and I've always found it a little unsettling. True, the lily-like flowers are attractive, but a stem with no leaves just seems naked. So I was a little wary of the Colchicum, but willing to see what they were like.

We got three 'Waterlily' bulbs and one 'Harlekijn' bulb. By the time we got them planted in early October, the 'Waterlily' bulbs were already sending out shoots, and we were pleasantly surprised when, a couple weeks later, they were blooming!

Since Colchicum are so close to the ground, the absence of leaves is hardly noticeable. And I was really pleased that each bulb produced three to six flower stems—much more of a display than I had expected.

There weren't any shoots on the 'Harlekijn', and we haven't seen any sign of life from it yet. I honestly didn't expect any of them to bloom this year, so I'll have to watch for green 'Harlekijn' shoots in the spring, and see what happens.

Eggplants by the Dozen!

2009-10-17T22:04:00.009-04:00

Slowly but surely, I'm putting the veggie garden to bed for the year (no pun intended...well, OK, maybe a small pun intended). Last weekend I pulled up the tomatoes and peppers, and this weekend I picked the last of the eggplants and pulled them as well. Shall we say I have more than a few left? (This is the last gleaning from just seven plants!)

This was the first time I had ever grown eggplant, and I was really pleased with the experience. I got to try a bunch of different recipes, but so far my favorite is eggplant rollatini—sort of like manicotti, except that the cheese is wrapped in breaded, sauteed eggplant rather than pasta. It takes about two hours to prepare, but it's obscenely good, and my new favorite dish for guests!

Now for my next experiment...freezing it and seeing how well it preserves!

You Look Malvalous

2009-10-14T12:37:00.004-04:00

Writing about hollyhocks in my last post made me think of their shorter cousin, Malva. This particular variety is 'Zebrina'—I like zat name!

Last year, they bloomed from late May to late June. This year, they were much later, from mid-July to mid-August. Not sure what accounts for the difference.

The nice thing about Malva is that you get a similar form as hollyhocks—the scalloped leaves, the clusters of flowers opening up from the base to the top of a long stalk—without the staking issues, since Malva gets only about three feet high.

The downside is that, unlike hollyhocks, they seem to be candy for critters. And they self-seed to an extent that borders on invasive, although with diligent weeding I haven't found them that hard to control.

At a previous home here in Ohio, we grew Malva around the light post at the top of our driveway, and the rainwater would carry the seed down the slope, depositing it not only in the grass along the edge of the drive, but also in cracks in the road. Sometimes when I was out walking, I would find little Malva plants poking up through the asphalt. It always amazed me that sometimes you can give a plant all the love and pampering you can, and it'll still die, but here was this Malva, washed randomly into the street, barely able to find a crevice to put down roots, and it grows like crazy. Not sure what lesson to take from that, but it seems encouraging.

Alcea Later

2009-10-10T23:09:00.007-04:00

I was late cutting the hollyhocks back this year. They look so lovely when they first start blooming at the back of the border in early June (shown here providing a backdrop to the tiger lilies)...

...but by mid- to late-July, the buds at the bottom of the stem have started to dry up, and as the ones at the top begin to open, the plant seems to get top-heavy and start leaning if not outright falling over. Hollyhocks can be a challenge to stake, given their height and weight and number of stalks, but this year I got some gathering hoops from Smith and Hawken (I'll miss that store!), and that helped enough that I didn't just cut them all back when they started getting scraggly and flopsy. That approach allowed me to enjoy a few stray blooms all the way through late August—there were even a couple flowers still hanging on when I finally did cut them back last weekend.

We grow Alcea 'Creme de Cassis', which is a perennial variety that we started from seed two years ago. It does self-seed pretty prolifically, although the babies don't seem to survive as well as the ones that we started indoors and transplanted. The clumps we initially started are the ones that come back each year, without much expansion. Or so it seems.

My husband really likes hollyhocks, so every year we do tend to throw in a few new varieties, but none do as well or last as long as the 'Creme de Cassis'. The seed package claims that the flowers are semi- to fully double, but 90% of them are single, which is fine by me. I really don't care for the doubles or pom-poms.

I've read that even perennial varieties of hollyhocks live for only a few years, so perhaps next year I should be more conscientious about gathering seed and starting some indoors to ensure that I always have this pleasant plant around for years to come.

More Foreign Flora

2009-10-04T17:43:00.003-04:00

As promised, I finally put together a slideshow of the flowers and gardens we visited during our recent trip to Alaska and British Columbia.

Enjoy!

Up, Up, and Away

2009-09-25T12:19:00.009-04:00

Most of the time, I buy plants for their flowers. But with Platycodon, what initially attracted me were the buds, which, true to the plant's common name (balloon flower), form what look like pale blue balloons before they open into lovely star-shaped blossoms.

We started our Playtcodon grandiflorus from seed back in 2008. The first year, the three-foot stems were a little spindly and definitely benefited from support. This year, I think they could have managed several months without support, but did need propping up later in the season.

In addition to the charming buds and flowers, I have to give this plant high marks for a long blooming season. This year, it started flowering in mid-June, and toward the beginning of September I had deadheaded all but one or two spent blooms, figuring that was it for the summer. But lo and behold, it's in full bloom again! (BTW, it's a good idea to wear gloves when deadheading this; it has a sticky, milky sap that beads up wherever the plant is cut.) And the icing on the cake is that it is untouched by disease or bugs or critters!

My Platycodon definitely came back much larger and stronger in 2009, and I'm eager to see how it matures in the years to come.

Foreign Flora

2009-09-18T13:16:00.006-04:00

My husband and I just got back from an Alaska cruise and spent a few extra days in British Columbia, and of course what vacation would be complete without visiting some gardens? We stopped by Stanley Park in Vancouver, and the fabulous Butchart Gardens in Victoria. I'll post a link to photos as soon as I get them uploaded and captioned, but in the meantime, does anyone recognize this plant? We saw it growing in Skagway.

What about this one? It caught our eye in Vancouver.

Not a Peck, Not Pickled, but Peppers Nonetheless

2009-09-03T13:05:00.008-04:00

It has been slow going for the peppers this year, perhaps in part because the summer has been cooler than normal. The sunflowers overshadowed the back row of sweet bell pepper plants, prompting them to produce only one pepper each. Two of the twelve 'Fat N Sassy' peppers that I started from seed damped off before I could get them in the ground, and I had to replace them with 'Red Bell' plants from Lowe's. Still, the few peppers I'm getting are gorgeous. I've picked four so far, and there are another 18 out there, thinking seriously about turning red.

I can't complain about the hot peppers—my four 'Volcano' plants have produced lots of good-sized peppers with just a touch of zing to them.

I've picked 11 so far, and there are another 25 in the garden that should also be turning red in the near future. I'm wondering how much fire they'll have when they're fully ripe (and whether I'll be able to eat them!). Fortunately, my son enjoys spicy stuff—I'm sure he'll find good uses for them!

Reign of the Sunflowers

2009-08-29T10:05:00.012-04:00

My husband loves sunflowers, and last year we found a very practical application for them. Our vegetable garden abuts the side of the house, which is great when you're in the kitchen and just want to run out and pick a couple tomatoes for a salad, but our house is brick, and with the southern exposure, it really radiates heat. The veggies do like warmth, but I don't think they want to be in an oven. So by planting sunflowers along the brick wall, we accomplish several goals: my husband gets his sunflower "fix"; the large plants block some of the sun from hitting the wall, thereby keeping it cooler; and the bright yellow flowers attract pollinators, which also make stops at the veggie blossoms.

Last year, we planted only a single row of Park Seed's 'Large Flowered Mix', and although I don't think we got nearly the variety that appeared on the front of the package, we did get some nice specimens.

Not only did last year's sunflowers self-seed prolifically (no doubt with the help of the finches that love to cling to them and pick at them), but this year we planted a second row, including Helianthus 'Russian Giant', and things got a little out of control. They towered over the cucumbers and peppers, and I suspect that this may have contributed to the fact that the back row of pepper plants produced only one pepper each—too little light, too much competition for water, or just too much intimidation. I felt like I needed a machete to get back there to harvest. And some of the sunflowers got blown over by the wind and were leaning precariously on the side fence. I did get a nice picture of the cascade of flowers before I had to cut them back.

While the 'Large Flowered Mix' produced plants about six or seven feet tall, the 'Russian Giant' really lived up to its name, getting at least nine feet tall. And the flowers were giant, too—about a foot in diameter.

We regularly feed the birds during the winter, and this year I decided to try gathering some of the heads and saving the seed. I'd read that you're supposed to hang them up in some kind of netting so that the seeds don't make a mess as they fall out, but I just stuck them in a wheelbarrow in the garage, and that seems to be working fine.

The birds obviously did a little snacking beforehand, but I'm hoping they'll enjoy this reminder of the summer when the snow falls.

Itsy Bitsy Spiders

2009-08-25T13:21:00.006-04:00

I'm no fan of spiders. I have been known to shriek loudly and jump through the ceiling when I find one crawling on me or greeting me from the bottom of a kitchen drawer. Nevertheless, as a gardener, I appreciate their benefit—they catch and eat the nasty bugs that eat my plants. So when I saw a mama spider and her bazillion baby spiders creeping out of an egg sack on the back porch, I got my camera rather than my rolled up newspaper. After all, how often do you get to see spider eggs hatch?

One Tomato, Two Tomatoes...

2009-08-23T11:54:00.012-04:00

I mentioned in a previous post that I was growing four varieties of tomatoes this year, which was true at the time, but that has to be amended at this point: I ended up with five that I know of, although I suspect I actually have six.

The four varieties that I started from seed included 'Saucey' (a paste tomato), 'New Yorker' (a mid-sized round tomato), 'Ponderosa Pink' (a rose-colored heirloom tomato), and 'Small Fry Hybrid' (a cherry tomato). I planted four of each kind. One of the 'Small Fry Hybrid' plants snapped in half when I transplanted it and did not grow from the remaining stub; two others were taken down by strong rains and hail. So I replaced those three plants with some 'Juliet' tomatoes that I bought from Lowe's. They were described as a grape Roma tomato, and that was an accurate description. They're the size of grape tomatoes, and the consistency of paste tomatoes. I had really hoped to replace my lost plants with some more cherry tomatoes, but didn't find any at the three places I checked, so I went with the 'Juliet'.

The 'Juliet' were actually the first to ripen; I started picking those on August 1. (All my tomatoes were late because I had to wait for the cauliflower to finish up before I could plant the tomatoes in their bed.) The 'Saucey' and 'New Yorker' were ready for harvest the following week, the 'Small Fry Hybrid' the week after that, and just this weekend I started picking the 'Ponderosa Pink'.

In this photo, here are (from left to right) 'Small Fry Hybrid', 'Juliet', 'Saucey', 'New Yorker', and 'Ponderosa Pink'.

As for suspecting that I actually have six rather than five varieties—three of the 'New Yorker' plants that I started from seed are producing mid-sized round tomatoes, just as I expected. But one of the plants is producing much smaller tomatoes that are shaped more like heirlooms—squat and wide with shoulders shrugging up against the stem. I would have suspected that I accidentally planted an extra 'Ponderosa Pink', except that these tomatoes are much smaller and redder than all the other 'Ponderosa Pink' tomatoes. So what I actually believe is that another variety somehow made its way into one of my seed packets.

Anyway—we're enjoying the fruits of my labor. The 'Small Fry Hybrid' tomatoes are larger than I generally prefer in a cherry tomato, but my husband says he loves the flavor. I never bother counting how many of these I pick; I just fill bowls for snacking, and they all disappear!

I have been very pleased with the 'Saucey' tomatoes, which produce nice clusters that tend to ripen simultaneously. And I have had no blossom end rot on any of them! Last year I lost dozens of tomatoes to that condition, and I'm not sure to what to attribute this year's success—the variety, the grass mulch, the milder, rainier summer, or the extra calcium boost. (In addition to using an organic fertilizer that includes calcium, which I've always done, I soaked several crushed eggshells in a pitcher of water for 24 hours, and then watered the plants with that liquid when the tomatoes were forming.)

From my 'Saucey' and 'Juliet' plants, I've harvested 10 lbs. 4 oz. of tomatoes so far, which I've turned into seven pints of sauce. The dozen 'New Yorker' and 'Ponderosa Pink' tomatoes that I've picked so far have become three pints of salsa (plus a couple grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches).

The 'Saucey' tomatoes are about done, but I'll be picking 'New Yorker' and 'Ponderosa Pink' for several more weeks, which suits me fine, as I've got several more recipes to try!

Caryopteris Carrying On

2009-08-17T12:34:00.011-04:00

Another indicator that summer is winding down is that the caryopteris (bluebeard) are starting to bloom. We grow two varieties of this plant, and if I didn't know they were related, I would never have guessed it.

We included Caryopteris 'Snow Fairy' in our garden mostly for its lovely variegated foliage. (Every once in a while it'll send up a plain green branch, which I promptly lop off.)

It dies back to the ground in the winter, so each spring it starts out like this...

...and over the season grows into an upright, medium-sized shrub like this:

The mottled orchid-like blue flowers, which start opening in August, are extremely small—you really don't see them until you're within a couple feet of the plant, but on close examination, they're quite pretty.

In contrast, Caryopteris 'Sunshine Blue' forms rounded shrubs of bright yellow-green foliage, and whereas 'Snow Fairy' dies all the way back to the ground, only the outer three or four inches of 'Sunshine Blue' die back. (I usually cut it back in the fall, but I don't know if I'll bother this year, since you really can't tell until the spring growth starts how far back it really needs to be cut. Either that, or I'll just cut it back more severely than I usually do. It just seems silly to cut it back twice—once in the fall and again in the spring.) This year a few whole branches have died, and I'm not sure what to make of that. But I just prune them out, and the adjacent branches seem to fill in the gap.

The flowers of 'Sunshine Blue' remind me more of ageratum than orchids, especially from a distance, and they are bee magnets! When our shrubs are in full bloom, you can almost hear the buzz from across the yard!

The Cardinalis Rule

2009-08-15T11:02:00.010-04:00

I grew one of the delicate, ground cover varieties of lobelia ('Fountain Blue') last year, but in my mind it doesn't hold a candle to the giant red Lobelia cardinalis or even Lobelia siphilitica 'Blue Selection', both of which are going great guns right now. One of the spikes of Lobelia cardinalis is six feet high!

I had grown both of these varieties when we lived in New York, thinking that all lobelia tolerate partial shade, but the Lobelia cardinalis was not happy about it. It grew, but not nearly as vigorously as it's doing here in Ohio in the sunny border. In contrast, the Lobelia siphilitica did much better in New York, even though it does get some shade where I've planted it here in Ohio.

The Lobelia cardinalis is so bright that you can't miss it, like a cardinal in a pine tree. Siphilitica is more subtle, and it doesn't help that I have it tucked in a spot that's not readily visible. (Incidentally, it gets its name from its ostensible use as a remedy for a certain disease that shall go unnamed, as this is a G-rated blog.) But both are nice plants, adding some color and interest to a garden that's starting to wind down for the summer.