Obviously I am not on VOX much... but I'm just wondering... is anybody else?? (You know who I mean!) ha ha ha
Another bulb update: all of those fall-planted bulbs that I forgot about until after frost hit last year have definitely made it through. The daffodils are gorgeous-- having gone through something like 150 bulbs last fall, I still finding myself wishing I'd planted more. The alliums are up to eighteen inches, and the crown imperials, having just broken ground last week, are already vying to catch up to them in height.
The only slight disappointment has been the Snake's Head Fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris)-- it looks like a few of them aren't going to sprout. I'll probably want to move them around at the end of the season, after they've bloomed. I'm still really looking forward to flowers from the plants that made it-- we saw some in bloom at the tulip festival (in a sunnier bed) and it made me even more anxious to see them in my own garden.
Besides the new additions, previous years' plantings have reappeared, notably Tulipa greigii 'Toronto,' one of my favorites. 'Salome,' one of the first daffodils I planted, has mostly disappeared except for one persistent bulb that has been the only one to pop up for the last two years running.
The cherry tree looks as if it will bloom this week, coinciding, as usual, with the beginning of rhubarb season. This weekend is my usual planting-out date, but the seedlings in the sun room aren't quite ready for prime time, having been started later than usual.
Not too late, though. Anyway, this has been another fairly late spring (like last year), so it will all even out in the end.*
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* - "Eventually, I believe, everything evens out. Long ago an asteroid hit our planet and killed our dinosaurs. But in the future, maybe we'll go to another planet and kill their dinosaurs." --Jack Handey
It feels like I've hardly had time to think about gardening this past winter-- this is the first year that I've approached a gardening season feeling completely unprepared. It's not that the usual winter tasks didn't get accomplished. Seeds have been ordered, pots have been bleached and cleaned, potting mix has been purchased in abundance. But somehow, I'm adrift. Maybe it's a sort of gardening mid-life crisis? I guess spring will tell.
Last year's garden: a post-mortem:
- The radicchio finally formed loose heads! There is still quite a bit of it in the garden, as the husband does not share my enthusiasm for its bitterness.
- The pumpkins never ripened fully, and started to rot. If you can imagine 75 pounds' worth of partly-mushy pumpkins leaking their slimy orange pumpkin guts all over the lawn-- well, as much as I wanted those pumpkins, it was pretty funny.
- Remember those bulbs that I forgot to plant on time last year? So far, the daffodils, at least, are coming up just fine. The Fritillarias haven't popped up yet, but I'm definitely seeing some alliums. Happily, 'Splendid Cornelia,' the hyacinth that I forced last winter, has also come up in its new home in a patio container. It may edge out the daffodils as first bulb to bloom this year.
Early-spring gardening:
- We've had a couple of weeks of beautiful weather, and as a result, the second giant clump of rhubarb has finally been divided. Three of the seven resulting clumps were adopted by a co-worker; two more are still looking for homes. I also have several French sorrel plants in search of a new home.
- Sweet peas and snow peas have been planted on time! I ordered particular sweet peas from a particular vendor this year and was really looking forward to them, and they somehow lost my order! So the replacement sweet pea seeds that I ended up grabbing at the store are some standard variety, but I'm really looking forward to the snow peas, which are a new-to-me variety called 'Carouby de Maussane.'
- Meet my very first orchid! It's an oncidium, probably 'Sweet Sugar.' So far, it's been in flower for about a month. If I can keep it alive, there's another oncidium that I have my eye on.
- I will spare you the introduction to my first David Austen rose, as it is currently nekkid (in a bare-root sort of way). I'm planning on acquiring one more, but I've got to find a place for it, first. One of my 2008 garden resolutions is to take better care of the roses this year. I've armed myself with horticultural oil, fungicide, and a fresh bottle of pyrethrin, but already have a nagging suspicion that it will take more work and more chemicals than I can stomach.
- The Northwest Flower & Garden Show has come and gone. It was my first year attending this huge PNW garden event. A few photos are posted here. The show featured dozens and dozens of plant vendors. I, of course, walked out with nothing but more frakking dahlia tubers :-/
- Finally, to explain the photo of the day: I did not grow these primroses. They came from the local nursery. However, I am attempting to stratify three flats' worth of primrose seed this year. Last year, my wintersown container of primroses was one of only two failures, so I've divided my containers into three separate batches and will try different methods to get the seeds to germinate. These aren't just any primroses, by the way-- they are mostly species auriculas, along with a batch of candelabra primroses. This task may prove to be beyond my skill level, but if even one of my three trial groups yields plants, I'll be thrilled.
Bullet-point posts are always random and exhausting, aren't they? Well, I'm sorry to unload all of that in one post, but it was time to get the blog all caught up. The 2008 growing season has arrived, and experience is beginning to teach me that there will not be time to wax nostalgic over past moments once things start taking off!
Every year, I try to keep track of what the garden looked like from month to month, and compile a photo montage for my own reference. Next year, I need to start doing this for all three of the major gardens-- this one plus the veggie plot out back and the cutting garden.
One thing I notice is that the garden doesn't seem as colorful this year as it did in 2006, when the front bed was dominated by zinnias, nasturtiums, gem marigolds, and dahlias. In future years, I will have to make sure to put more flowers into the front berm.
Structurally, this year I lengthened the center bed and added the trellis in the front bed. That trellis worked wonderfully and wasn't much trouble to build-- next year I think I may make one or two more.
The bare earth in the first photo reminds me that spring is around the corner! Last spring seems so far away now-- where did I find the time to start all those seeds? Next year will present new challenges, in any case-- I've lost use of the south-facing windowsills that I usually use to grow seedlings, and will have to resort to experimental methods. It's going to be an interesting seed-starting season.
All told, though, I'm feeling relatively optimistic where the garden is concerned. Winter sowing is coming up! And the approaching solstice means that we're almost halfway through the season of darkness. I will be thrilled to get some daylight back!
Looking back on things, 2007 was a good year for the garden. But with a little luck, 2008 will be even better.
To compare montages from previous years, click here.
We're all inundated with catalogs at this time of the year, right? Since the start of November, it seems like I've received holiday mailings from every company I've bought or received gifts through in the past five years. Most of them go straight into the recycle bin with a disdainful huff, but when it comes to the new season's seed catalogs, my attitude takes a complete 360.
I'm sure that seed companies know that by sending catalogs out in winter, they're hitting home gardeners up at our most vulnerable hour, when we're tired of ice and bare branches and desperately craving thoughts of warmer and more bountiful days to come. To be honest, I have enough seed stored away for a few years' worth of crops, but when the catalogs arrive, I can never resist treating myself to a few new varieties.
My favorite catalogs have tons of information on germination and cultivation of different crops-- after I'm done shopping from them, I keep them around as reference material and find myself turning to them at various stages throughout the growing season. I like colorful plant pictures as much as the next gardener, but I've come to be suspicious of catalogs with a photo-to-text ratio of less than fifty percent. I mean, they say that a picture's worth a thousand words, but unless those thousand words include germination instructions, dates-to-harvest, disease resistances, and so forth, I'd might as well be staring at photos of brightly-wrapped paperweights.
If you were thinking about giving your favorite urban gardener one of those gift paperweights, by the way, you might want to take a look at the You Grow Girl 2008 calendar instead. It is informational, beautifully designed, and full of fabulous photography. I've ordered mine! Admittedly, I don't know your favorite gardener personally, and it may well be that they really want a gift paperweight. (I suppose). I'm just making the suggestion.
By the way, a few posts back I mentioned Folia, a garden journal/community website that's in beta testing at the moment. At the time, there was a waiting list for new accounts, but there's a membership drive going on at the moment such that existing members can give out instant-access invitations to other gardeners. If you're reading this and interested in trying it out, leave a comment or shoot me a PM. I'm really excited to be able to share the opportunity, so don't be shy! I'm generally awful about replying to comments, but this is one thing that I can promise I'll get back to you about quickly.
That said, as this might well be my last post of the year-- happy holidays, everyone! See you in 2008!
It happens to me every year-- in the rush of things that have to be accomplished after frost hits, something gets lost in the shuffle. This year, it was the spring bulbs. I've had them sitting around for over a month-- the crown imperials that I've been after for years, along with a massive quantity of daffodils.
To add to the calamity, the local grocery store put its bulbs on clearance this past week ($1.00 per package!), virtually forcing me to buy the alliums I had my eye on earlier in the season. (Uh-huh). As the cashier was ringing up my pile, she gave me a funny look and asked, "Can these really still be planted out?"
Well, I have my own doubts about whether or not it's still safe to plant out bulbs, but over the weekend, I went ahead and did it anyway. Although it's pretty cold, the ground isn't frozen yet-- the biggest difficulty in getting them out has been the non-stop rain that generally hits Western Washington at about the same time as frost. I've planted bulbs late before with good results, and feel pretty confident that most of them will come up just fine in the spring.
If not, I will report back in a few months. I'll be sad if they rot, but they won't keep anyway-- and hopefully, blogging my (possible) loss will serve as a caveat to anyone else who, like me, finds themself suffering from forgotten-bulb syndrome.
Carrots - 'Purple Haze' and 'Nantes'
Last year, after being very impressed with myself for having grown my first carrot, I mentioned that I was going to try a variety called "Purple Haze." In the spirit of continuing to show off my carrots, here is "Purple Haze" mixed in with more of the Nantes type pictured in last year's photo. Pretty cool-looking, eh? Root crops are supposed to turn sweeter after frost; these post-frost carrots certainly do seem sweeter than their mid-season counterparts. I wish I'd planted fall beets!
Elsewhere in the vegetable garden, the sorrel is starting to succumb to the cold weather, after all; I'm debating whether to pull out my extra plants now, or wait until spring to give them away. I'm also worried about the leeks; they look fine so far, but I don't know how winter-hardy the variety I planted is. They're too small to use yet, though, so the decision to leave them in is a no-brainer. Finally, the radicchio is still not heading. I may pull out some of the plants and move them to an area that gets more sunlight. If that doesn't work, I'll be starting from scratch with a more sure-heading variety in the spring.
In the flower beds: last week, I cut back the dead dahlias to let the tubers cure. They're due to be dug up and stored next weekend. While I was messing around in the flowerbeds, I put in my fall-planted bulbs and rearranged the perennials to try and "fix" my plant height issues-- next year, I don't want to have to deal with two-foot larkspurs buried behind four-foot high dahlias again. Here are the before and after shots. The difference doesn't look very impressive right now, especially since the dahlias have been cut down and the annuals taken out, but by spring the improvement should be marked.
As a final note, we pruned the grapes this past weekend. Do not try this at home! Grapes are normally pruned in spring, but since the recent frosts killed off most of the foliage, and since my husband doesn't like the way that the vines trap humidity against the garage, we now have two naked, scrawny trunks on either side of a wooden arbor, defenseless against the impending cold. Husband wants to move the grapes next year; I think they're going to be too much trouble to move, and would prefer replacing them with a more flavorful variety, or maybe even wine grapes.
Even though I'm not very fond of red seedless, I have to admit that owning our own grapevines has increased my interest in and respect for viticulture. The grapes in particular have taught me to be a vigilant and merciless pruner; every year, we cut them way back except for a very few of the strongest vines from the previous year, and the plants always seem to bounce back with increased vigor. Even though we neglected the vines after pruning this past year and let the birds get most of the year's bounty, in a way, the business of pruning is its own reward. There is a calm to it, a sense of purposeful effort that I enjoy.
There are still bulbs to plant, tubers to store, and gardening supplies to be cleaned. I keep thinking that the gardening season (and thus, my blogging season) is done, but it still seems like there's always something to do. I once joked to a greenhouse grower that I couldn't have a greenhouse and do the four-season gardening thing because I needed the winter break! But there really isn't a break-- just a slowdown. And I think I like it that way.
The forecast said that temperatures would get down to 31 degrees overnight on Thursday and Friday. Well, the night before the big frost, I decided not to chance harvesting the pumpkins early, since they're not fully orange yet and supposed to be able to take anything down to 27 degrees, but then the weather decided better and dropped to 26 degrees. Bad call on my part!
Luckily, the pumpkins appear to be fine, at least at initial examination. I cut them from the vines and moved them into the garage to finish ripening and curing, and swear that the largest two must weigh twenty pounds apiece. Of course, it may have just seemed that way after the fifty-yard dash from the back garden to the garage door! In any case, with some luck (and judicious use of the food processor and freezer) we'll have pumpkins to last the winter.
As for frost's toll on the rest of the garden, most of the vegetables had already been removed, but some dahlias that I hadn't gotten around to cutting were lost. On the other hand, I was surprised to discover that the sorrel made it through, which means we'll be able to enjoy more of the cream of sorrel soup that I finally got around to making this past week.
There have been tasks that I've been meaning to get to, like planting my legumes, shallots, and spring bulbs, that I hope to work on over the weekend. Then it will be on to cleaning out the pots and plant supports, and then, finally, I can sit down to my favorite winter pastime... planning next year's garden.
I know I said that the garden was dead a few posts ago, but the rumors have been... well, slightly exaggerated, anyway. It's true that the majority of the summer vegetables are done now. I spent a day last week pulling out all the tomato plants, the tomatillos, the beans, and the squash. But in the process, I harvested a number of green tomatoes that will hopefully ripen all right indoors.
And after the tomatoes came out, I put some raspberry canes in the back bed as a temporary holding spot until I'm able to build them a better one in the spring. The raspberries were being given away by someone at work, and I couldn't resist.
Elsewhere in the garden, the dahlias are still going strong-- the frost that got the tomatoes didn't touch them. Admittedly, my dahlia collection was based around autumnal colors (predominantly oranges and reds with muted yellows and pinks), but they're really producing some gorgeous seasonal bouquets.
Also going strong? The leeks and radicchio... finally! I'm beginning to understand that I planted them at the wrong time of year. In theory, they're supposed to be planted in early spring, or fall. I suspect that I planted mine too late in spring, because the leeks stayed spindly, and the radicchio green and floppy, all spring and summer long. But now the radicchio is turning red and looks as if it might actually form heads, and the leeks are starting to look almost leek-like. I'm very pleased. The sorrel is still going strong, as well. I'm going to have to thin out the plants before frost, so there is a large pot of cream of sorrel soup in my imminent future.
Today's photo is of a fall planter that I crammed together. I've never thought much of asters, but this year I'm into them-- they're autumnal without being chrysanthemums. If that heather makes it through the winter, it's going into the front yard.
If you are a gardener, you might want to check out Folia, an exciting website that's in beta testing at the moment. I don't know how long the waiting list is for an account, but it's very fun-- a plant journal, social website, photo album, and garden brag sheet all in one ;-) It doesn't look as if pages are open to the public yet, but if you snag an account, you can find me listed under the username Satrina0.
Halloween (and the average first frost date in this area) is coming up fast! Hopefully I'll be able to sneak in another post before we really get into the winter doldrums.
You may remember this African violet from January, when it was just a leaf stuck in a plastic cup full of vermiculite. I transplanted my cuttings to terracotta pots a couple of months ago, and while I lost one plant in the process (the water-grown plant seen in April), the other two are looking very healthy, and this one is sporting delicate purple blooms.
In all, I started with eight cuttings and ended with two plants. I think I could have done better if I'd 1) trimmed my stems to 1" before sticking them in either vermiculite or water, 2) moved the plants to potting soil sooner, and 3) been more careful about keeping water off the leaves.
It was a fun experiment! I hope I'll have a chance to start African violets from leaf cuttings again.
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