Garden Rant

The Magnolias Are Confused and So Am I

March is defnitely the cruelest month.  I never heard the phrase "mud season" until I moved to upstate New York 20 years ago, but March is it, mud season. Of course, April is no cakewalk, either.  I can usually count on there being snow on the ground in Saratoga Springs into April.

But most of this March was as mild as May, and the plants have been reacting, doing things disturbingly early. This threatens all kinds of celebrations, both public and private. Elizabeth just posted about Buffalo's Dyngus Day celebration being upset by too-early catkins on the pussy willows. (Next year, I'll skip Garden Walk and beg an invitation to Dyngus Day, which apparently includes a parade, as well as much Buffalo-style imbibing.)  

Me, I live for my spring bulbs, but the earliest ones, the species irises and species crocuses, went by too fast in the heat. If the tulips were just to bloom for a week and then have done with it...I would be very sad indeed.  'Purple Prince' tulips, a full month early

It was so mild that the even the excellent British science magazine NewScientist has noticed our weather and dubbed it "summer in March."  NewScientist suggests that warming water in the Gulf of Mexico may be to blame for the March heatwave in the Northeast.

It was nice while it lasted, but this week things are more normal, with temperatures dipping to 25 degrees at night and gloves required even in the daytime. Of course, once you've taken those gloves off, it's hard to put them back on! You'd rather just risk a little chapping and bleeding. The plants around here all feel the same way.  We count on this tree

The most magnificent piece of borrowed landscape in my neighborhood is a huge Magnolia soulangeana in front of a Queen Anne mansion. I was unhappy this week to see that many of its fat buds are brown and dried-out looking from frost damage.

I'll be disappointed if this doesn't work.

In my own yard, the little magnolia I stuck into the shadiest corner in the place is sensibly sulking and waiting until the sun gets higher in the sky to bloom.  My peach trees also, in the warmest and sunniest possible spot on my hell strip, are waiting for more certain conditions to bloom.

But this apricot has totally lost its head:

Risk-taker

I don't know that I'll ever get fruit off of such an impulsive tree.

Kat Kinsman of Eatocracy: Woman After My Own Heart

I really enjoy Kat Kinsman's playfully broad definition of food reporting on CNN's Eatocracy site, and she makes me laugh on Twitter. But today, she ventures into the vegetable garden in a delightfully sloppy and inexpert way, with precisely the right message for beginners: Don't worry if you're doing it right. Just do it.

Do You Houzz?

I have a serious case of "exciting new website launch" fatigue right now. Every day a thrilling new announcement lands in my inbox about some groundbreaking new digital initiative that I absolutely must get in on--now, right now.

And I just cannot bring myself to care about any of them.

Some of these amazing new digital initiatives have turned out to be actual Big Deals (Tumblr, Google Plus, Pinterest), but I can't bring myself to do much more than glance at them from time to time. And many, many more of them are just dumb ideas that will go nowhere (Tumblr, Google Plus, Pinterest.  Kidding!  I'm thinking more of the My Garden Friends -type sites where somebody we've never heard of wants us to set up an account and start sharing pictures of our garden or clicking on images of Proven Winners and Monrovia plants we might add to our fake digital garden. Please, people.  Make it stop.)

But what about Houzz?  I think this is pretty cool.  I read this article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a landscape designer who has some out-of-town and even out-of-the-country clients thanks to Houzz. So I decided to give it a closer look.

Houzz is a sort of Angie's List-meets-Yelp-meets-Pinterest for home and garden contractors. You can go to Houzz and browse photos to get an idea of what sort of thing you might like to do at your place--then you can find a contractor who will do that for you. You can buy products that turn up in the photos (stepping stones, a bench, light fixtures) .  You can browse or create your own idea books -- such as this one, about hiding trash cans, which I actually found quite useful.

And there are discussions where you can ask questions or get more specifics about an idea you see or whatever.

So here's my question--are there any landscape designers out there using Houzz, and if so, houzz it going? (sorry, couldn't resist.)  I see Michelle Derviss, and it looks like Gen Schmidt just joined--anybody else?

And what about people selling stuff on Houzz?  Or--anybody using it to figure out how to redo your deck or build a new patio or a chicken coop or some such thing?

Finally, to all you writers of garden designer-ish books--are you using Houzz to promote your books?  Here, for instance, is an Idea Book about edible garden design that features Rosalind Creasy's book on the subject. That is a very cool idea.

What do you think?  How's Houzz?

(okay, sorry. I'll stop.)

Worm Giveaway--We Have a Winner!

Wow.  I think we got more comments on our earthworm post than we've ever had.  Clearly you people are into your worms.

And our winner, chosen with a little help from a random number generator, is--Janet at The Queen of Seaford. She's already a worm lover, so now we can expect her to become completely worm-obsessed.

Thanks to the folks at Nature's Footrpint for donating a Worm Factory.  And remember, if you didn't win, you can still pick up one of their bins using a special discount code just for GardenRant readers by clicking here. (limited time only)

Thanks for playing, everybody!

More on the sustainability of federal landscapes

I was pretty excited to report on new guidelines for sustainable federal properties, but wondered how enforceable these guidelines are and promised to try to find out more. 

I did.  It's a bit discouraging. 

I talked with Ray Mims, the point guy on pulling together input from 31 agencies and 13 consulting bodies to produce the guidelines.  Interesting guy.  Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, then - get this - salesman for Dow Chemical.  That gig prompted a big career change and a return to school.  Now a conservation horticulturist, Ray has worked for the Denver and Atlanta Botanic Gardens and the National Cathedral here in D.C., and currently heads up sustainability projects as part of his job with the U.S. Botanic Garden.

Asked how much effect the guidelines would have, Ray answered "Hopefully a lot", an answer we can't exactly take to the bank.  But all agencies have goals for sustainability, and now they can use good landscape practices toward that end.

Here's where it gets discouraging - asking whether Ray or his bosses at the Botanic Garden have any say-so at all in whether federal agencies implement these guidelines.  Well no, because the Botanic Garden is part of Congress, not the executive branch, and only the executive branch can implement this stuff.  Ah, government.  I keep remembering why I've never worked for one. 

So this fabulous product is a guidance, not a directive.  It's not enforceable. But hey, at least this whole effort came directly from the White House.

Ray gave me a little more hope with the news that the people in charge of most federal buildings - the boringly named General Services Administration - are early adopters of Sustainable Sites standards - they're already using much of it.  And the Park Service, in their design competition for redesigning the National Mall, required that competitors follow these the new guidelines. In Denver, the top Park Service person is using the guidelines already.  Change is happening, though not all of a sudden, by fiat. 

The goal is to change the whole damn marketplace, not just new federal courthouses and office buildings.

Taking the long view, changes in landscapes make good business sense.  Developers wants their properties to be "green", to be LEED-certified, and now finally (thanks to SITES), points toward that end can be achieved through good landscape practices.  And as Ray points out, buildings, as they age, just get less and less efficient while landscapes get more and more productive in providing eco-services.  Plants rule!

Not to mention that points for landscape practices generally are less expensive to achieve than through building practices.  So economics are on the side of green.

Don't forget that Ray and his colleagues created Landscape for Life for the home gardener.  Coming soon are PowerPoint presentations about that for use by schools, garden clubs, Master Gardener groups, etc., and sustainability guidelines for still more types of landscapes - around schools, historic homes and cultural institutions.  All good.

The great Dyngus Day pussy willow crisis of 2012

“Without the proper pussy willows, who knows. Marriages might not happen. Relationships could fall apart,"—Eddy Dobosiewicz, Dyngus Day Buffalo co-founder

Those of you who are wondering what the hell Dyngus Day is and why pussy willows are involved should not feel ill-informed. Celebrated the Monday following Easter Sunday, Dyngus Day (sometimes spelled Dingus) is only observed in a few cities throughout the U.S. It is a Polish tradition, sort of a bizarre amalgamation of Mardi Gras, Sadie Hawkins, and St. Patrick’s Day. The end of Lent and the beginning of the courting season are celebrated with splashings of water—which have evolved to squirting with plastic water pistols—and gentle lashings with pussy willow branches. (Singles are supposed to use the squirt guns and willow branches on anyone they happen to fancy.) There's also lots of polka. And beer. And vodka. I’m proud to say that Buffalo has the largest Dyngus Day celebration in the U.S.

However. The ridiculous temps of the last few weeks were hotter than what we normally see in May and June and the salix discolor shrubs have reacted accordingly, starting to burst out of bud well before time. In Western New York, the little furry gray catkins have been showing signs of turning into their less desirable flowers weeks before they’re supposed to, according to this article.

Actually I think we’ll be fine—the temps just took a sharp turn downward, which might help—but the Dyngus organizers have been deluged with suggestions and even some entrepreneurship on the part of pussy willow shrub owners who are auctioning off their branches to the highest bidder. 

See? There are all kinds of hidden consequences to this End of Days weather dysfunction we’ve been seeing. Dyngus Day is April 9 this year. I’ll be a judge at the parade and I’ll be watching for any pussy willow shortage. Fortunately, it won't affect me personally.

D.C. Awash in Cherry Blossoms

Washington's new Martin Luther King Memorial sure looks better now than it did last fall when those cherry trees were bare and newly planted and leafless.

Really, anything looks better with blooming cherry trees somewhere in view.

Thanks to pal Harvey Leifert for uploading these and more of his photos here on Flickr. 

And for more about these famous, now 100-year-old cherry trees and the whole history of Japanese plants in American landscapes, visit Adrian Higgins in today's WashPost.

Can't Wait for School to Start!

It's a bizarrely early spring here in upstate New York.  I've never started planting out of doors at the same moment I've started tomato seedlings in the basement, but that's where we are this year.  Ready to go! I've been looking at my own garden with something of a sigh--it's just too small for me--I need a bigger yard.  But the school garden at the elementary school down the street gives me a surge of adrenaline every time I walk past.  Ready to go!

This will be the fourth year that I've run the afterschool Garden Club with my partner Carol Maxwell. And in that span of time, I've learned a lot about gardening with kids and cooking with kids, as well as life, the universe and everything. So here is my advice to anybody eyeing a sunny spot in a schoolyard and considering whether he or she could do something civic-minded there.

1. Just do it.  I am NOT a very civic-minded person.  I'm not a total kid person, either.  And I'm certainly not an organizer.  But the Lake Avenue Elementary School garden has nonetheless been one of the great joys of my life.

2. Cook as well as garden.  Gardening with 20 elementary school kids--impossible.  Designed to drive the adult gardener crazy.  You will constantly find yourself pleading with a 2nd grader, "Thin the carrots, don't yank them ALL out before they're ready."  Let children who've been cooped up in school all day out of doors, and they will look at any space as a playground, including a garden. They will play tag over beds of emerging seedlings. It will be chaos. Cooking, on the other hand...you can get 20 kids to wash, chop, mix and saute simultaneously.  They will focus.  They won't yell or fight.  They will love eating the food they've grown.  We cook in the faculty lounge.  Obviously, Lake Avenue Elementary has the world's most patient faculty.

3.  WIDE paths in the garden.  Enough said.

4.  The Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog.  I like many different seed catalogs, but the kids like exactly one: Baker Creek.  Let's face it: the Baker Creek entrepreneurs, Jere and Emilee Gettle, are very stylish people, and the catalog is a gorgeous as a Newbery-medal-winning picture book.  In previous years, I'd bring in 20 disparate catalogs for the kids to choose seeds out of.  They fought over Baker Creek.  This year I got shrewd and called up Baker Creek, which generously sent me 25 of their beautiful books.  No fighting!

5.  Pick the right partner, ideally a genius cook.  I know almost everything that needs to be known about vegetable gardening for the purposes of a school garden. What I need is inspiration!  I certainly got that in the form of my partner Carol,who is an amazing, creative, intrepid cook who constantly expands my horizons. She even knows about Korean food!  The food we make in Garden Club is superb--so good that we have kids polishing off things like Swiss chard pie and eggplant salad and asking for seconds. So good that the parents arrive suspiciously early to pick up their kids.  And the kids, of course, LOVE serving the food they've made to their parents.

6. Pick the right principal.  We certainly have her.  For years, we've had to battle the facilities side of the district, which initially rejected the idea of the garden on the grounds it might draw rats. (!)  But she has backed us through everything, including expanding the garden, and wants to find a way to allow us to expand the cooking operation, too.  She is a pretty, gentle, deceptively small-voiced Southerner who really gets things done. Here's proof: Her school was just invited to apply for a federal Blue Ribbon School designation as an amazing place, which it is.

7.  Even more important, pick the right head custodian.  After years of giving us various head custodians who looked upon the garden with extreme distaste, the district recently chose the nicest, most sensible man in the world to oversee the building and grounds.  Cause for celebration!  John really understands the garden, and since watering it is sometimes a problem--it takes a key to turn on the water, so it has to be done during the hours when the building is staffed--he waters it for us all summer long.  For this, there will surely be a reward in the afterlife.

8.  Relax.  I'm very tightly wound when it comes to timing in my own vegetable garden, keenly aware that certain things have to happen NOW.  But that doesn't always work in the school garden.  Since snowplows run over it every winter, we can't keep the fence up and have to wait until all chance of snow has passed in spring to begin. There are vacations.  Carol and I both work, so there are Friday afternoons when Garden Club just can't meet.  Stuff happens late sometimes, or not at all.  

It took me two years to figure it out, but this endeavor is NOT about the garden and making it perfect. It's about the kids. And for them, the garden IS perfect.

Still More Earthworm Madness!

Andrew Keys continues his podcast series, Garden Confidential, with--guess what?  Earthworms!

He and I chatted about all things wormy a while back, and if you just haven't had enough worms already this week, you'd better head over to Fine Gardening's website and check that out.

Worms: A Love Affair

So several years ago, I wrote this book about worms.  There were no such books on worms at the time--in other words, there was no sort of narrative natural history that told the story of worms and earthworm science and the role that worms have played in ecology and agriculture and human civilization. 

So since I couldn't find that book, I wrote it myself.

That was 2004.  My publisher, Algonquin, being the wonderful publisher that it is, kept it in print all this time, and when the warehouse ran out of books a few months back, they decided to re-issue it with a cool new cover and a bit of updated information in the appendix. 

So here it is--the re-released Earth Moved, which you can win by posting any sort of earthworm-related comment.

There's something else, too:  Right around the time Algonquin was thinking about putting a new cover on the book, I heard from the people at Nature's Footprint, makers of a stacking worm bin called The Worm Factory.  They were fans of the book and wanted to include an excerpt in the manual they send out with their bins.

They also offered to give away some worm bins when the book re-launches.  And so we are gathered here today to give away not just a book, but also a bin, to some lucky winner.  Check out the bins here, and if you don't win one, they are giving GardenRant readers a 10% off coupon, so click through to get that, too.

I have had a stacking bin much like this one since I lived in Santa Cruz many years ago.  It's probably close to 15 years old and it's still in great shape.  Mine wasn't a Worm Factory, but I have one of those too, now, and it's actually a bit better for life on the porch, patio, or garage, because it's a bit more compact.  Also--made in the USA. Recycled materials.  Very nice.

So!  Comment to win.  Gen is also doing a giveaway over at NorthCoastGardening, so you can go over there and have another shot at it.   The winner will get a choice of black, terra cotta, or green, but you don't need to specify that in your comments--I'll get all that from you if you win.

Have fun!  Oh, and here's Gen and I talking about the benefits of a stacking bin vs. the old-school plastic tub. With guest appearances from my chickens.

 

What I was tempted to buy at the Philly Flower Show

When I attend the Philadelphia Flower Show I always arrive just as it opens and head straight for the displays and competitions (hopefully before the place gets insanely crowded).  Then it's time to do some shopping!  Here are the products that caught my eye this year.  So what do y'all think of them?

Mounted on the wall these kinda look like backpacks but on the floor I saw that these carts that can haul all sorts of things.

Above, these outdoor-indoor rugs made from recycled plastic happen to have been recommended to me recently by a landscape designer - for my new screened-in porch.  (Have I mention I'm having one built at my new house?  Photos coming soon!)

Above, I had a nice chat with the folks from Nature's Footprint about their UrBin Grower self-watering containers and Worm Factory vermiculture bins.  The owner (right, whose name I neglected to get) doesn't read blogs but knows Amy and was giving her book away during his talk at the show.  (Love the new cover.)

This cute guy standing in a tub of water does very well selling the expensive but totally waterproof Irish boots he's wearing.  My traveling companion bought some last year and swears by them - for gardening or with designer jeans for more formal affairs.  She says his cuteness wasn't the deciding factor but it sure didn't hurt.

The expandable rake on the right is a product I WANT.  Beats bending over to pick them or using one of those horrible blowers.

These hanging vases hold water, so work with fresh flowers but me, I'm a sucker for dried arrangements.  Maybe on that screened-in porch I'm hoping to have built any day now (permit pending).

Finally, another indoor-outdoor decoration that caught my eye are these metal trees.  I neglected to check the prices, though, and they may be too rich for my blood.

Speaking of which, I planted my tuches in a fancy hammock-swing with attached umbrella and loved it, but the $1,195 pricetag makes it a nonstarter.   Fortunately, more affordable hammocks abound; I just have to find room for one on that new porch I can't shut up about.

Living dangerously?

What's the point of keeping forced tulips inside when it's 75 out—my patio could use the color.

It’s lucky that a greenhouse bursting with perennials in not close at hand, because who knows how crazy I might get this spring. Buffalo is balmy; so are most of the contiguous states. A weather map I found here shows thousands of high temperature records, most in the Midwest and Northeast. These are fun times for weather geeks; I have particularly enjoyed reading Paul Douglas’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune blog, which just goes on and on with weather facts and related trivia. There is plenty of serious stuff, like warnings about pine beetles, and plenty of fun stuff, like pictures of SUVs crashing through the ice.       

Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do to exploit this. I did find the first violas of the season, which I’ve inserted into big pots already planted with tulips. Usually violas or pansies don’t make an appearance here until mid-April and usually the big pots of tulips don’t get dragged out of the garage until early April. Usually.

Buffalo had its biggest crowd ever for Sunday's St.Pat's parade.

I’ve also planted some lilies and dahlias (using the Eleanor Perenyi method for the latter), done some spring clean-up, and watched as the hydrangea buds (which I didn’t bother to protect this winter) started showing green weeks ahead of their usual time.

It seems … odd. I’m getting that out-of-time seasonal dysfunction feeling. It’s enjoyable to bask in a March heat wave. It’s also innately disturbing.

Good Taste, White Flower Farm Style, versus Good Taste, Kitchen Style

It's been many years since I paid any attention to White Flower Farm.  I used to order a bareroot rose or shrub from them now and then.  Early in my career, they disabused me of the notion that it was good to order perennials by mail by taking lots of money from me and sending me, in exchange, infant plants incapable of surviving life in the outdoors.

I will admit that when I first started gardening, I found the White Flower Farm catalog enchanting--beautifully photographed and artful combinations of plants--even if the copy was very twee.  In his first book Second Nature, Michael Pollan has a hilarious essay, "Made Wild By Pompous Catalogs," that skewers the pretensions of White Flower Farm and its fictional proprietor Amos Pettingill, who, Pollan says, "sets the tone for the house":

Amiably eccentric, opinionated, prudent, aloof from commerce, afflicted with a bad case of anglophilia, ironically self-deprecating and yet at the same time (a trick only the well-bred seem able to pull off) coercive in matters of taste.

When I picked up the catalog this week, I saw that nothing's changed, except of course what's fashionable in gardening.  And now vegetables are muscling some space from the perennials.  So now "coercive in matters of taste" has been plastered over the subject of vegetable gardening, and it made me pity every beginner who looks to Amos to light the way.

FIrst, there is the price of WFF's vegetable seedlings:. $6.95 or 7.25 apiece. The website informs me,"Our stocky seedlings are grown and shipped in 3in pots that are a full 4in deep, so the plants you receive have strong, well-developed root systems."

In other words, the same kind of good-sized seedling that might cost even a $1.50 or $2 apiece at the farmer's market.

Fine, it's your money.  What are you getting if you place your trust in White Flower Farm?

Well, they will take advantage of your ignorance by selling seedlings of things better and more economically started by shaking a packet of seeds over the ground, such as lettuce and broccoli raab. 

And they will ship you cucurbits, which are also much better grown from seed, if you have a long enough season.  These are the great fuss-budgets of the garden in terms of temperature and tend to join their maker if you stick their seedlings in the ground before the soil has grown warm and cozy.  What are the chances that White Flower Farm will mail your delicate zucchinis at precisely the right moment, so you can just pop them in and get a decent return on investment? Because if you can't just pop them in, it is a disaster to have them start vining in their pots.

White Flower Farm will even save you the trouble of reading the variety descriptions by sending you a "Beginner's Veggie Garden Collection," 9 plants for a mere $61, designed for those "who want to get their toes wet without diving in."  In other words, for customers too scared to do anything without Amos's okay.

Indeed, the catalog copy insists that a superior taste has organized this collection: "We've gathered the best varieties for home gardeners."  

Huh.  Personally, I don't find the the collection appetizing.  It includes a full two varieties of summer squash.  If I am only planting 9 plants, I can assure you, given how big the plants are and how ridiculously productive, I would only plant one summer squash, and it would be a pattypan, which they don't mention.  The tomato selection in this garden includes only cherry tomatoes.  C'mon.  What about a big juicy 'Pineapple' or a 'Paul Robeson'?  Don't beginners deserve those, too?

It also includes three varieties of bell peppers, red, yellow, and orange.  In Zones 5 and below, our peppers only rarely ripen to red. So we'd be planting green, green, and green.  Seriously? Three varieties of bell pepper and no hot pepper or eggplant?

Indeed, the thing that bothers me most about the "Beginner's Veggie Garden Collection" is the claim that it's possible to gather the best varieties for all home gardeners, when gardening--and the performance of different varieties--is so absolutely local. 

Last year, I moved my vegetable garden from boggy rich soil in the country to sandy poor soil in the city. And varieties I have been growing for years simply have a different flavor out of this very different soil.

So White Flower Farm's insistence on its superior taste, which possibly has some meaning when we are talking about ornamentals, is meaningless in a vegetable garden.  The great arbiters of taste in the vegetable garden are the soil microbes particular to your little patch of ground.  They are what divide the ordinary from the superior.  Nobody else is worth listening to.

Here's my beginner's vegetable garden collection, but ignore me if you don't live down the street:

1. Arugula

2. Basil

3, 4, 5. Tomatoes:  1 'Matt's Wild Cherry,' a crazy sprawler, 1 'Paul Robeson,' and 1 'Pineapple.'

6. Eggplant 'Rosa Bianca'

7. Cilantro

8.  'Bennings Green Tint' pattypan squash

9. On the north end, pole beans, preferably a purple variety like 'Blue Coco.'

Techno-teasing trauma

Here's another guest post from Friend of Rant, professor of veterinary medicine, and master gardener James K. Roush, who blogs at Garden Musings. Hark to his tale of frustration with QR codes and questionable, albeit tempting, spring bulbs.—Elizabeth

I was out running errands around town yesterday and, entering a large home improvement box store that will remain unnamed, I was captured, as usual, by the entry display of various bagged up bulbs and perennials. As a general rule, I try to avoid spending any time in front of those racks because I know that most of these plants and bulbs will be dehydrated with little chance of survival and also because they are very common perennials and thus below the standards held by a real gardener. Since I'm not a real gardener, however, I nearly always leave with a bag of something or other. Call them impulse purchases.

Anyway, today, it was a bag of Tigridia that caught my eye. Having never seen them before, and seeing that they were promoted as "Sun Lovers" (see the package above), my first thoughts were a) "That would be good for a novelty," and b) "I wonder if they are hardy here?" The packaging didn't list a USDA hardiness zone, but it did have one of those wonders of modern convenience, a QR code, shown here. And I, being of an early technologic bent, have just such a code-reading app on my Smart Phone.  (Go ahead, try it out.  It works from the screen.) 

So there are the Tigridia, on sale at Home Depot, and here you are, the technically-proficient and thoroughly modern gardener.   The package QR Code links you to more information from the Longwood Gardens website. And what do you find? The message"LFGinfo.com spring bulbs coming soon." To quote Charlie Brown, "Aaarrrgggh!"

HELLO! STOP TEASING ME WITH YOUR PROMISES OF KNOWLEDGE!  It's already spring, almost past it in many parts of the country.  I'm a poor, uneducated common gardener just looking for help.  Don’t you think it is about time to post the necessary information?  Why put the QR code on the packaging if it is not active?

I've since found out that Tigridia pavonia is only hardy to Zone 8, and furthermore, is short-lived, each flower blooming only for a day.  Wonderful.  I just purchased an annual daylily. Of a magenta coloration I now find truly ugly.  

Well, so run the disappointments of our gardening lot.  Doomed forever to take a $6.98 chance on twenty dehydrated, decrepit bulbs that will not survive winter in my Zone 6 climate, and may not even come up for one season. Tigrigia  is noted on one website to grow in Olathe, Kansas and Lincoln, Nebraska, if, like dahlias, you are industrious enough to dig them up every fall and replant every spring.

I don't grow dahlias for just that reason.  As I've noted many times, digging and replanting bulbs in my stone ridden soil is a Sisyphean recipe for a broken back and a broken spirit.  But I will try to enjoy the Tigridia for this summer, fleeting as they may be.  Those few flowers, at least, whose bulbs survive their dessicated state in my drought-stricken Kansas soil long enough to grow and bloom.

Chicken Encyclopedia--We Have a Winner

Who could resist?  The Chicken Encyclopedia goes to Lisa Beckman for her totally charming chicken story.  Thanks for playing, everybody!

 

This isn't about our chickens but rather my neighbors who also raise meat goats. Just the other day she came home to frantic children because one of the mommy goats was in process of deliverying a kid and it was stuck. Unfortunately, it was stuck for so long that it took my neighbor gall 20 minutes of pulling to extract the little guy only to discover it had died. She went to the barn to get the shovel to bury the little guy and was detained for about 20 minutes, that when she returned the little baby goat was nowhere. She searched everywhere and noticed there were no chickens outside and in fact it was awful quiet. Looking in the chicken house she discovered the now alive baby goat snuggled in the chicken house, with her 10 plus chickens laying on it, near, beside it giving it warmth with their feathers fanned out over it, as if in a blanket. Happy to report "Mr Jack" the baby goat is alive, happy and doing well with his 10 chicken mothers since his own has abandoned him entirely.

Rose's Garden: A $1.99 eBook You Won't Want to Miss

I'm thrilled to see that Algonquin has chosen Carrie Brown's beautiful novel Rose's Garden for their second round of $1.99 ebook promotions. This is a gorgeous book about a man left to cope with his wife's garden after her death. It's a sweet and tender love story, and she really nails the garden stuff. 

It'll be $1.99 through March 25.  Get it anywhere ebooks are sold, and if you're not sure where that is, go here to get direct links.  You can read it on your ebook reader, your tablet, your smartphone, or your laptop or PC--most of these platforms offer various apps and free software to make all that possible.

There are some other good titles on the list this time--I've read Heather Lende's IF YOU LIVED HERE, I'D KNOW YOUR NAME, and Dan Kennedy's ROCK ON, both of which are great fun.

Have You Peed on Your Garden Lately?

Well, why not?

Our favorite garden professor, Jeff Gillman, tells you how. 

Well.  Not how.  I'm pretty sure you know how.  He'll tell you why, though!

These and other amazing bits of information can be found in his clever and highly useful new book Decoding Gardening Advice, written with his co-author Meleah Maynard. We love the book; go check it out, and enjoy Dr. Gillman's advice.

 

Philadelphia Flower Show goes Hawaiian

The largest and oldest flower show in the U.S., the Philly Flower Show is a always grand, but especially this year (to this visitor) because it brought the lushness of Hawaii to green-deprived Easterners.  Starting with this 30-foot waterfall festooned with orchids and Anthuriums.

Below, don't try this at home.  Maybe in a hotel lobby?

I was happy to see touches of Hawaiian funky, which I love as much as the vegetation.  Surf's up and all that.

The front porch displays were my favorite reminders of real Island gardens, especially the one below on the left.  On the right, they got the spirit right but a lava rock walkway?  Not in bare feet. Not even in sandels.  Ridiculous idea!

Below, Asian-style minimalism works well, but a tiny lawn, not so much.

In fact, to my eyes, nothing Eastern worked in this year's show.  That includes the overwhelming displays of forced spring blossoms in the exhibit below.  Though local landscapers who pay a fortune for displays like this can't be faulted, I guess, for wanting to showcase plants that would grow in Pennsylvania. 

A very popular feature of the show were the amazing displays of pressed plant art, like these. 

Below, miniature gardens are always a hoot.

And a personal favorite were these tall mesh columns filled with a variety of natural materials, even clam shells. They were the created by the aspiring designers in Temple's School of Environmental Design, and their display took first prize among academic entries.

I coveted the terrarium containers.  

Green walls were everywhere, like this one covered in spring greens.  And this compost tea bin was part of a large exhibit about soil health.

Lots of food-growing going on, and not just in this wonderful display by the Pennsylvia Hort Society's City Harvest program.  Do click that link to learn about how inmates start the plants, which then go into community gardens, where crops are grown and harvested for food pantries.  I was told that many of the recipient families have expressed interest in being part of the growing process, so City Harvest is finding ways to close the loop.  Inmates are also channeled into landscaping apprenticeships.  Last year the Flower Show raised about $1 million for City Harvest and other terrific programs.

Next week I'll post photos of products that caught my eye in the Show's market.

Daylight Savings Time: Farmers hate it, gardeners may like it, and the rest just go shopping

Sunrise from my house at 7:30.

It’s disconcerting to be plunged back into early am darkness as I get ready for work, but it’s even more disconcerting to hear that, far from saving anything, Daylight Saving Time actually increases residential energy use as well as gasoline consumption. I read this in Organic Gardening, which cites as one of its sources Michael Downing’s Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Savings Time.

Many of you probably already knew this; I had never given it much thought. For me, changing the clocks has always been something that I just have to remember to do.  But whatever may have been the point in originator Ben Franklin’s time, the practice seems to be having the opposite effect now. Consumers are more likely to get into their cars and go shopping after work when it’s light out, so it helps convenience stores and shopping malls. Golf courses also like it. Farmers apparently don’t like it because it disrupts their schedules and their connection to the natural world (at least temporarily).

The consensus seems to be that DST is here to stay because it would be a huge pain to change it.

Jumping forward is good for after-work gardeners, or anyone who wants to work outside later.  I have long taken advantage of it to enjoy an early evening drink on the patio. But what if it was done away with (as well as its companion time change in the fall)? Could we let the light fall where it may? I think I could.

A New Leaf

I never was a seed starter.  There was a nursery near me that for a long time had a fantastic selection of vegetable seedlings. 

But then the lovely people who owned it sold their house, moved to the South, and only returned in the spring and early summer to run their business.  The number of varieties they offered seemed to shrink.  So I began starting my favorite varieties of tomatoes and peppers on the windowsill, as well as a few vegetables hard to find started in nurseries, such as celeriac and leeks.  The tomatoes and peppers never seemed to get enough light there.  And the celeriac represented a different kind of frustration: months of babysitting and then chomped by groundhogs within minutes.  All in all, not a very satisfying experience.

Then a few years ago, I decided to plug in an old shop light left behind by the previous owner in the basement and grow my tomatoes and leeks there.  Guess what?  They looked much better.

Last year, I splurged and bought another shop light.  I posted about my set-up here.  For the first time, my pepper seedlings rivalled those in the nurseries.  Of course, there were still frustrations: my onion seedlings all disappeared to cut-worms as soon as I planted them in the garden.  But on the whole, babysitting those trays of tiny plants was worthwhile.

This year, I retired the old shop light with the frayed cord and bought 5 new ones to join the one from last year.  I even turned on a drill for the first time in my life in order to screw in hooks to hang them from.

I used to feel constrained by my seedlings, their neediness, their Goldilocks-style fussiness, their intolerance of neglect.  But now that I have my cheap shop lights and a timer, I feel freed by them.  I can have any variety of tomato or pepper I want!  I can experiment with growing potatoes from seed!  I can have as many alpine strawberry plants as I want, even though they are impossible to find in local nurseries!

Somebody please stop me before I start growing flowering perennials from seed.