Garden Rant

Blooming in Maryland

In celebration of June's Garden Blogger Bloom Day I'm showing off my favorite new thing - vegetables festooned with petunias and other blooming-like-crazy annuals.  These petunias are called Panache 'Tickled Pink' and Hort Couture sent them to me to try, along with the sweet potato vine 'Blackie' you see there and lots more. 

Click here to see the rest of my Bloom Day offering.

Tulips—surreal and otherwise

Enjoy them while they last. I wish everything could be like bulbs. Last month I dragged a bunch of big pots out of my garage; this month they’re providing a bright ribbon of color around the otherwise immature green of my back garden. In the front yard, the combination of tulips, late daffodils, and early perennials make the last big pop before the deep shade of the surrounding maples takes over.

This week the NY Times Magazine had a salute to tulips from an unusual perspective—the air above Holland. Here’s the slide show by photographer Julian Faulhaber. Images like these make me wonder if I should take a more formal or minimalist approach—choose 3, 2, or even 1 colors and stick with a plan. It will never happen, of course. What does happen is that the bulbs themselves guide me in certain directions. All the clusiana are very reliable returners so I will likely keep planting them, even though I don’t love them as much as the whittali. I should probably give up on the acuminata and the humilis “alba coerulea oculata.”

And I’ll always have my fads. Right now I’m in love with t. gregii “Fire of Love.” My big “what was I thinking” this season is the inexplicable pairing (in a couple containers) of Prinses Irene and Synaeda Amor. I thought it would be orange and purple, but it’s more like orange and pink—the kind of dull, muddy pink I don’t like. Ouch.

In the Times piece, the comment was that tulips keep us sane when winter doesn’t quite want to loosen its grip. That was certainly true in the dreary chill of yesterday, which also happened to be Bloom Day. For me, the 5/15 GBBD will always be about tulips, as much as I love brunnera, epimedium, hellebores, pulmonaria, and all the other early perennials—not to mention shrubs and trees—they will always be the context, not the stars. But the context is important. (Eventually a big field of tulips gets kind of boring. Even from the air.)

Flower therapy

What a disgusting winter. And when I say this I am including all the atrocities and catastrophes we have seen occurring across the world—some of them as I write this. It has been disturbing and depressing inside and out for months.

Though a couple minor snow events will likely roll in before spring truly arrives, we are finally seeing some mid-50s in the forecast.  Snowdrops and crocuses are appearing. I was happy just to see the ground, which has been intermittently covered since November—a long time even for here.

The uncertain times could be one reason—according to a recent GWA survey—that gardening is becoming as widespread among those under 40 as those “of a certain age.” Not that I place great stock in these surveys—all of which seem to be conducted by organizations that have the most to gain by a gardening uptick. (I never see the big general polls—Gallup, Pew, Zogby—surveying gardening. I guess they don’t think it’s important enough.)

But I can believe that there is some sort of across-the-board increase in gardening, even if not as dramatic as the industry cheerleaders would like us to believe. And I can believe that many will be happy to turn off the news and work outside this spring. This year, my tulips were starting to bloom inside, just as the snowdrops were revealed by last weeks thaw. Other ways of hastening the season include bringing big indoor plants outside as soon as possible as well as big pots full of bulbs, which will likely come up before the ones in the ground.

As for all my indoor forcing containers, they will be filled once more with summer bulbs like lilies and dahlias, creating (hopefully) a phalanx of color and scent. Such a relatively cheap strategy of creating beauty seems constructive—in some small way. Happy Bloom Day.

This is only half

The rest were given away as holiday gifts—I think I originally had about 200 hyacinths in pots and glasses, as well as 50 or so tazettas. The tulips are still in the root cellar. I am told that one pot of hyacinths I gave away before Christmas is already in bloom.

There are many different ways to force bulbs for winter bloom, and none of them are that difficult. Warm zone gardeners can chill bulbs in the fridge before planting. In the north, even if you don’t have a root cellar, any cold dark place that will maintain temps of 45-55 works. You can get creative and just make such a place. A dedicated fridge might be the best way, though I would turn the temperature up (contemporary fridges are too cold), disable the light and keep nothing in it but bulbs.  I only mention all this because I think there might be a perception that bulb forcing is too specialized or difficult.

Over the years, I have stopped looking for the “best for forcing” notation in bulb catalogs. I like to experiment with the offbeat or rare varieties, most of which you can find at Old House Gardens. The only failures I’ve had are sometimes with forcing glasses (they really prefer being in dirt) and when I have tried to overwinter them in big pots in the garage. If they get too cold—which is what happened, I think—they will freeze and turn to mush in spring.

Shown above are (in larger quantity) City of Harlem and Woodstock and (a few of each) King of the Blues, Menelik, Mulberry Rose, and double Hollyhock. There are also some Erlicheer tazettas. The Mulberry Rose is really cool. Can’t wait. Though planning it and doing it is more than half the fun.

(This was also mentioned in my Bloom Day report. Click on the link to see all the other gardeners who participated.)

My husband wants to start a vegetable garden

Always looking for answers ...

So? That’s what many of you reading this will be thinking, as well as “why not?” and “everybody should have a vegetable garden!” And “why is this a big deal?” And, maybe, “what’s wrong with her?”

But you don’t understand. This is very much like—no, it’s worse than—when your 7-year-old comes home with the cute little kitten or puppy. “Oh, c’mon, can I keep it! I’ll take care of it!” It’s worse than that because no such promises are being made, just a lot of statements and questions that indicate less than no knowledge of any kind of gardening, much less edible gardening.

I believe the idea is to do something productive in these uncertain times. So if we both lose our jobs, we’ll still have our vegetables. Or something. Maybe it’s some vague notion that we can eke out edible rewards from the small urban property into which we have poured 10 years worth of resources. (More than thousands of bushels of tomatoes and beans could equal.)

Here are the questions I have faced so far: 

Why won’t vegetables come back every year? What did the Native Americans do? Weren’t the Three Sisters already growing all the time? I don’t want to replant everything every year.

How can I plant them so I don’t have to bend down at all?

Which ones will start producing right away? I don’t want to wait until August.

Which ones are easiest to plant and care for? Which will produce the most harvest for the longest?

Which are the most versatile for meals?

Do I really have to water every day?

Color is important—I want lots of different colors. Which vegetables are most like flowers?

These are the questions—most not unreasonable—of someone who thinks you plant a vegetable garden and get lots of vegetables. I have planted and failed many times with various edibles, but it’s fine for me because I expect failure. I realize that gardening is mainly about failure. I accept it. Indeed, I embrace it.  But I can’t say that.

So there will be a vegetable garden. It will be squeezed into a thin sunny patch on the side of the garage. I will do my best to offer guidance and help choose the plants most liable to succeed. I will troubleshoot. But I don’t want this to be my puppy.

I’m sort of dreading the spring. Maybe—an adventure?

November Bloom Day Reports

Maryland gardens hang on well into November, so I've got a couple of Bloom Day Reports for ya -  here on my blog and here on the Homestead Gardens' blog.  And thanks again to Carol for making us see the beauty all year long, on the 15th of every month.

Blooming in May

On my blog I've posted some May-blooming beauties from my garden, including this Spiderwort that apparently isn't universally admired.  Happy Gardenblogger Bloom Day to everyone but especially to Carol - because May IS officially her month.

Tulips en Masse

My belated Gardenblogger Bloom Day pics are a tip of the hat to tulips - and public gardens.  This one's the glorious Brookside Gardens. 

Want more?   Here's 4 scenes from my 4/11 visit.

GBBD, just for the record

It seems worth acknowledging that garden bloggers throughout the colder zones are saying that many of their plants are at least a week ahead of schedule. Checking my archives on both Rant and my own blog, I see that I had nothing except hellebores and some amaryllis inside; everything else was in bud. Not so, GBBD 2010. 

This year, I have species tulips aplenty, tons of daffodils, scilla, erythronium, double bloodroot ready to open, and other spring perennials. Humilis Persian Pearl is shown at top, and I have another humilis (violacea) that has already gone in and out of bloom. On a recent walk, a local wildlife refuge (above) was also showing earlier signs of life than usual. 

Am I complaining? Hell, no! Could it be that Western New York is poised to enter a new era where we actually have spring? Seems too good to be true.

A snowdrop is a snowdrop is a snowdrop. Or is it?

According to Anna Pavord, there are as many as 150 different kinds of snowdrops. I’ll take her word. She only includes 14 or so in her new book, Bulb, and admits that to ordinary gardeners (like me) the differences between the various types are minimal at best.

Indeed. Until a couple years ago, I didn’t realize there was more than one variety. I had always liked them, and the small row by the front of our house was the first thing I noticed when we moved in ten years ago. But, for various reasons, we had to pave over this area and they never revived. I ordered a bag of bulbs to plant in a new area, and didn’t even pay attention to whatever came after “galanthus” in the name. (It was likely elwesii.) The next year, I noticed the nivalis “Flore Pleno” doubles and that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Tulips are another matter. I am capable of poring over the tulip pages in a bulb catalog for days, circling and crossing out different varieties, agonizing for hours over which two Single Lates to pair in the front beds, and carefully figuring out which of the species types I still lack.

Obviously, I don't have the delicate sensibilities of the true snowdrop connoisseur. I can’t get as excited as I should about the various types of green markings or lack thereof. To my eye, the basic shape and petal configuration of a snowdrop just doesn’t change all that much from variety to variety—we won’t talk about the color.

So the experts can have their 149 varieties. I’m sticking with the Flore Pleno (top). From above, these look like any other snowdrop—first there's the fat white pendant, then the three long petals unfold. You can see hints of what’s inside, but the best thing to do with these is take a few inside and place them in a small vase on a tall shelf, as I have done. There, in warmth, without pain to back or knees—and in happy ignorance of all the more interesting varieties I should have—I can admire them to my heart's content.

Count this as a Rant contribution to the March GBBD—just a day late to the snowdrop party going on throughout the Northeast.

For Bloom Day, Heather and Lavender -and some Serious Bashing of Cut Roses

Okay, we're just going to mush this month's Garden Blogger Bloom Day together with Valentine's Day, okay?  Only one day off~!  And yesterday I happened upon these lovely offerings at my favorite indie garden center - a heather on the left and a lavender on the right.  Both look awfully romantic to me - at least as romantic as cut flowers and much more sensible because they can be popped in the ground as soon as it thaws. 

I've never grown them myself, though, and wonder how well they do here in the Mid-Atlantic Humidity Belt (when it's not the Mid-Atlantic Blizzard Belt).  Let me guess - the secret is good drainage, right?

The Skinny on Cut Roses isn't Pretty

On the other hand, here's what most guys bought for their sweethearts.  And it isn't just Amy who's spreading the word about all the chemicals and worker abuse that go into the growing of these fragrance-free items.  Global-food-justice expert Raj Patel posted an expose yesterday called O Rose, Thou Art Sick, and here's a killer excerpt:

The question is whether locking rural people into producing fripperies for the rich is the best way of doing it. And that’s precisely what one does when one promotes the pesticide-soaked jet-sent cut flowers industry, whether in its rapacious Dole-shaped form, or its more guilt-friendly ‘VeriFlora’ form.

He goes on to bash our guilt-assuaging notions of "fair trade" and ends with this:

This Valentines, remember to say it with potted plants. 

Photos taken at Homestead Gardens.

For Bloom Day, River Birches and Architecture

Okay, nothing's blooming here.  But even a deciduous tree can be stunning in the winter - especially if it's this one, and especially if the Air and Space Museum is in the background.  This urban garden stopped me in my tracks, despite the cold.

There's another view of this winter beauty plus some links to local culcha over on my blog.

Belated Bloom Day from Mexico

I spent Bloom Day in Mexico, staying with some friends who bought a house there.  (Note to self:  must cultivate more friends who own homes in exotic locations.)  We were in La Penita de Jaltemba, a little town on the Pacific coast about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, in the state of Nayarit. 

It's a funny town--as far as we can tell, it hardly existed in 1960, and since then the Mexican government has invested in roads, electricity, water, and hospitals so that the entire stretch of coastline can be developed as a tourist destination. And in fact, many Americans and Canadians have bought homes there.  Back in the day--five or ten years ago, or longer--you could get a lot for a few thousand bucks and build a house for not much more than the price of a fancy car. Now the situation is more like this--lovely Spanish-style homes that might cost in the low millions in southern California, but still seem pricey for Mexico in the low six figures.  It's almost as if this community is becoming the new southern California.

So I spent some time pondering the socio-politico-economic-cultural implications of this infusion of Americans and Canadians into an area that was, after all, developed with the specific intent of encouraging us to move here--but it was hard to hold those thoughts in my head for long.  Mostly I floated in the blissfully warm ocean and wondered when my next fruity rum drink might arrive. 

And I imagined the garden I would plant if I lived there.

Bougainvillea is big, of course.  This double variety blew me away:

And you're probably going to have some red ginger.

And a banana tree, from which will eventually sprout actual bananas.

Weirdly, what you see for sale in the market includes roses and geraniums, both of which are pretty tough in this climate.  Go back to el norte if you want a rose garden!

And I suppose a garden is not a garden without a gardener, at least in these parts.

The truly glorious thing to grow in a garden like this is the fruit: mango, lychee, guanabana, papaya, crazy exotic citrus...just add rum!

For Bloom Day, Nothing Beats the Knockout

They're not the top-selling plant in the U.S. for nothing - still blooming strong on November 15 and displaying perfect, disease-free foliage.  The top photo shows a nice mass of reds in my neighborhood, and here's one lone pink Knockout in my front garden.

And below, going rogue on the official meaning of "blooming," I'm showing off a neighbor's maple that easily rivals any blooms for sheer impact.  Or, as they're constantly saying on HGTV, pop.

A day late and all that

If you'd really like to read my (belated) Bloom Day whinings about the crappy weather and how bulb planting is the only thing stopping me from drinking one of the 10 bottles of FreezePruf I have received, you can check it out here. Seriously though, what the hell happened to fall this year?

It's also Garden Blogger Bloom Day

So here's my favorite shot from my garden right now, same as last year.  It's the super-common Sedum 'Autumn Joy' with Callicarpa (beautyberry), over a bed of Sedum acre in my hell strip.

Splish splash

 Here’s a Bloom Day surprise that’s been two-and-a half-years in the making, proving that the sleep/creep/leap theory is just as true for water plants as it is for other perennials. I’d just about given up on this miniature water lily, which for three summers has put up 3-5 leaves at most. I’d figured there was too much shade for it.

 But here it is, exactly the coral-pink flower promised on the tag that came with this when I bought it along with a bunch of other long-dead aquatic plants when the pond was installed (it’s really more a water feature than a pond). There has been considerable travail within the limited confines of this little puddle. Special pond fish were purchased, given away to neighbors with deeper ponds for overwintering, and then never retrieved. Now I have a couple goldfish I won at a local festival that are getting fatter by the day, and another overwintering dilemma looms.

 

As for the other plants, the pickerel (invasive in Florida, apparently), iris, corkscrew rush, and papyrus, their fates are shaky at best. The iris—and maybe rush—will likely overwinter in the pond; the others will be brought inside, or, if that fails, replaced next spring. Water gardening is still a mystery to me, but the late season success of this little nymphaea may be the turning point for a more thoughtful attitude toward these plants. Maybe.

August is bustin’ out all over

Forget about June. June sucked. And so, for the most part, did July, in terms of the sun required to kick blooms into action. But now we truly have some sultry weather and these flowers are loving it.

I’ve posted about rudbeckia "Herbstsonne" (top) here. Last year they were just about finished at this time. This year they're still going strong and the bees are everywhere among them. The plants are way too tall for where they are, but I stopped caring about such things some time ago (if I ever did).

Another bonus is that I still have tons of lilies yet to bloom, including some speciosum rubrum (regular and alba) and these tigrinum flore pleno. Increasingly, these species types are my favorite.  Normally I don’t show too many close-ups, but species lilies are so cool, you have to.

And Thursday night I saw a hydrangea I had to have. It’s a blue lacecap with variegated foliage, some of it pure white. Wild. Hydrangeas do very well here and there is very little I wouldn't pull up to put a hydrangea in its place.  A rainy, somewhat coolish summer can still be great for continuous plantings and plenty of blooms.  

Blooming today, the Tardiva hydrangea

I'm a big fan of Hydrangea paniculata 'Tardiva' - it's right up there with the oakleaf.  This one's pruned to be almost espaliered, wide but close up against the English laurel hedge.  So in this tight-fit border I can still walk along the middle, passing between the Tardiva and that 'Ogon' spirea.  Speaking of which, I'm in love with its chartreuse willow-like foliage anywhere, but especially with the lamb's ear.  There's some Salvia 'May Night' and reblooming Tradescantia in this vignette, too.

For once, I followed the Garden Blogger Bloom Day rules.  Though back on my blog I broke 'em again.

On views

 

The author of that frightful bit of doggerel that has somewhere in it “a poem as lovely as a tree,” did touch on one of the truths of nature. The view of the skies above or the water ahead is as simple and satisfying in terms of beauty as one could wish. Certainly nothing in my carefully contrived if not consciously poetic garden comes close.

 

But I love it for all its awkwardly placed plantings—all the tall things in the front, the sun-loving lilies stretching forward in their partial shade, the voracious ivies, the rampaging wisteria. I’m not there now, but I know these lilies—the same I posted on last year—are currently in bloom, and quite a bit more. Check here for some more GBBD meanderings, and of course here.