Plantness ’25 and the Winter Garden

Jan12

Today is the 12th day of January and as such marks the first day of the Ten Days of Plantness. Some observant readers may have noticed that in a recent post it may have said the holiday begins on the 10th day, but they were mistaken since upon re-reading the post it clearly says that the Ten Days of Plantness begin on the 12th and runs until the 21st, and I’m 100% sure I didn’t just go back and edit my mistake out.

So what are the Ten Days of Plantness you might ask? Well let me explain. It’s a very official holiday which celebrates ten of the gloomiest and coldest days of the Northern Hemisphere’s winter with plants! Just like happiness is the act of embracing happy, plantness is the act of embracing plants, and for the next ten days the world is invited to celebrate each sunrise (regardless of clouds or gloom or snow) with a new plant. Indoor plants count, outdoor plants count, seeds count, gifts count, cuttings count, pots and tools count, cut flowers, dried flowers… I think you get it, just keep in mind fake flowers and leaves don’t count. And to what end is this holiday geared towards? Encouraging and welcoming back a new gardening season. Fully celebrating means signs of spring and blooming witch hazels by the 22nd, not celebrating means eight more weeks of winter, so be careful.

The garage growlights still have plenty of room for a few more plants, so an excuse to add more is both timely and welcome.

It was only just last year that my friends and I found out about the >10 Days of Plantness<, but this year we were prepared. My Plant Posse was activated a week in advance. Kathy of Cold Climate Gardening plotted a trip down through the snows of upstate NY, Lisa worked some meal making magic, ‘Cosmos and Cleome’ Kimberley was in charge of the Plantness cake… yellow cake with a chocolate frosting and raspberry filling in case you’re curious 🙂 … Kevin arrived at the crack of dawn for last minute prep and logistics, and our Louise opted out. Sadly oral surgery, pain meds, and soft foods are in no way lessened by celebrating the ten days.

Hmmm… another bromeliad, actually it’s an offset from one of last year’s plantness purchases and proof that not all houseplants come here to die.

Once mobilized we headed out on a nursery by nursery tour through the local indoor plant scene and did the holiday proud. Creekside Gardens is always a treat and we make that trip on a regular basis, but two other stops were first time visits for me. Keller’s Garden Center surprised us with a nice range of offerings (and a funny run in with another desperate January shopper who we all agreed we just wanted to take with us for the day), and then there was Hidden Garden in Plymouth Pa. The name is appropriate. My Plant Posse is relatively trusting but when I pulled into the parking lot of some run-down beer distributor a few questions were raised. “Why are you getting out here” was one of them, but “trust the process” is what I said. I admit to being a little proud of the Posse as they grabbed purses and whatnot to accompany me in to buy a case of Michelob light, but instead passed through the double doors towards the back of the building, and entered the zen zone of Hidden Gardens.

My geraniums have forgiven me for ripping them out of their planters in October and stuffing them into undersized pots to sit out the winter under lights. It’s just the kind of color one needs in mid January.

If you’ve ever visited Plymouth Pa it’s probably not a second visit. Of course there are nice areas, but this former coal town/flood zone city, hasn’t seen much change in the last 40 years, other than changes for the worse. I remember my first drive through and it left me with the impression that just the local strip club and local diner, the Tilbury Inn and Flamingo Diner (both now closed after flood and fire and subsequent demolition) were handling a steady flow of customers, so it’s nice to see a business which has headed off into a new direction. I’ll be back I’m sure since the store is full of vision and optimism and I think we were all impressed.

The blue of Streptocarpella is always welcomed and seems to do well in my relatively cold indoor garden.

As usual I’ve gone off track. Let me get away from talk of strip clubs and get back to Plantness and the indoor garden.

I’m trying another orchid mostly because $4 on a clearance bench with buds showing was just irresistible. Two months later and it’s blooming and all I know is it gets watered and I think it’s a dendrobium and it must be pretty easy to grow since it still looks healthy.

The Winter Garden here sounds like more than it is. It started as fluorescent shop lights but recently I’ve begun upgrading to cheap LED shop lights as I find them on sale here and there. One light, three lights, ten… over the years it’s expanded from a table in the back of the barely heated garage, to a converted workshop in the garage, and last year oops, it grew to include the unheated basement of our new addition.

The garage is cooler, and has dipped below freezing in spots near a window or door, but generally stays frost free. It’s a great place to grow on a few hardy cyclamen coum while the outdoor ones are locked under an icy blanket.

I’ve gone on about the garage grow lights, and if winter keeps making an effort towards cold weather I’ll probably go on more and more about it, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned much about the new basement grow space. It’s expanded. It hasn’t replaced the garage growing area as I think some people in this house were hoping for, but I’m pleased. I had hoped to do more this winter as far as making it a lush, plant filled space, but I think it’s doing good enough.

The new basement growing area. Mostly stuff overwintering and a little on the unkempt, sparse, and messy side, but I like the potential!

The basement plants are doing better than expected, and if anything is holding them back it’s probably me. As you may know I struggle to motivate myself to water, and the garage garden has a hose which I use that makes it into a 15 minute job, but the basement garden involves filling buckets, carrying them from the basement, dipping a tub in to ladle out water to each plant… some people find serenity in watering, but I do not. I hate it. Once dying plants motivate me enough I’m drilling through to access the house water supply and I’m running pipes to a spigot inside the new area. Me + a hose inside the house will be messy of course, but I at least have plastic down already to keep spilled water and soil from staining the new concrete floor.

More bromeliads. The aggressive spines along the leaf edges are something you should consider, but in general I’m amazed at how easy they are to grow.

Once I get running water back there of course I’ll need a little goldfish pond as well, obviously with a fountain. I just mention that in case you think not being able to get things done would be putting a damper on what I’d like to get done 🙂

The succulents seem happy overwintering in the basement. Most of what I have gets no water or maybe a splash once a month, and they just sit there in the low light without rotting or stretching their stems too much.

Hopefully having all this space to put more and more plants doesn’t come off as gloating. In reality it’s kinda cramped with a low ceiling in the garage, mice and spiders, chilly… and in the basement the statement ‘why are we wasting so much space on plants’ has come up even while the walls are unfinished and the space lacks real outlets or heat… but whatever. Gloating is when I show a picture of the bougainvillea which didn’t do much all summer but is now putting out flower after flower as if it really doesn’t mind the ‘in progress’ surroundings and the hit or miss watering.

I guess you can grow bougainvillea under cheap LED shoplights in case somebody was wondering. The colors are less intense, but again this is a Pennsylvania basement not the French Riviera.

So that’s Plantness and the Winter garden, and although I definitely need to get out and add bunches of new plants because of how much empty space I have, you might not have that luxury. Here’s my advice from last year which I shall repeat: Get plants which you know you’ll probably kill or give away. The mini moth orchids I bought last Plantness are happily putting out new flower stalks on my mother’s windowsills this year rather than decaying on my compost pile like the florist cyclamen I also added last year. Both were worth it and I’ve moved on… just like the African violet I also bought 😉 Keep in mind that you’re forcing yourself to think of plants for ten days rather than focus on winter, so pick up a bouquet at the grocery and just do it. I know some people are a little timid about killing growing things, and it can be fun to hold on to a poinsettia for years, but you’re not picking up a kitten or adopting a baby here, you’re getting excited about lengthening days and the fact winter won’t last forever, so enjoy!

And in case you’re wondering, I did enjoy the start of Plantness. I’m all set for the first five days and will hopefully fill you in on them before the week is out 🙂

Leave the Leaves?

Oct20

Autumn has its moments but without a few rainy days and minus the cooler temperatures I’m at a loss. We could use some rain. The lingering annuals and a bunch of perennials, and even some shrubs, are wilting now and between you and me I’m almost hoping for a strong frost to come along and put things out of their misery rather than spend the next few weeks hoping for some last-minute miracle to come along and renew the decaying garden. I was also warm yesterday when I was out doing something in the sun, and flirted with breaking a sweat… which is totally inappropriate for this season of briskness and cozy jackets.

A form of the native aromatic aster, I think this one is ‘Raydon’s Favorite’, should be in every garden. It outblooms most chrysanthemums and is a late season pollinator magnet. Here a final bloom of the rose ‘Rosarium Uetersen’ adds a nice dash of coral pink.

Fair warning that this gardener rarely has a kind word to share about the autumn season, so don’t worry that my disgust and lack of interest in the yard means I’m struggling with some kind of seasonal trauma that I’m barely surviving, because that’s not the case. I’ve been busy and motivated, just not in the garden. Garage cleanouts, painting, puttering, and life in general are moving along nicely and I don’t really mind that the daily garden tour has turned into a ten minute walk of ‘meh’.

October colors in the front border. Okay, but kinda boring to be honest.

It’s been somewhat warm and the forecast promises warmer for the next few days, but I did notice a few things have been touched by frost. Coleus mostly. Cuttings were saved a few weeks ago and are doing fine, as well as all the other tender goodies which were dragged inside before the cold, and for some reason this year it didn’t seem like nearly as much work as other years. Many things are in the new basement area and apparently having enough space for your plants goes a long, long way in making the indoor migration less painful. As a way of celebrating I stopped by a greenhouse clearance sale last week and bought four new plants and that of course is not a problem at all since I stayed under fifteen dollars and I’m sure many people have purchased just one single orchid and then stopped.

I love euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’ and hope it can survive the winter in this pot. Normally they are borderline hardy here, but maybe if I drag the pot under the protection of the front porch it will stand a chance.

So upon review it sounds like I’m just waiting for winter to come and wipe the outside garden’s slate clean and that might be a fairly accurate assessment. Year round gardening works for some people but I like a nice winter break, a season and a time to reflect, and maybe a pause in the battle to regroup. Some things look messy now and I like that I can tidy them up once at this time of year and have it stay that way rather than face a new field of weeds the week after I pull them all.

The potager two days before frost singed the awesomeness of the banana. Bringing other things in was a breeze, but digging and lugging this beast in?… remains to be seen.

A clean slate in autumn and ‘leave the leaves’ doesn’t necessarily play well together since my impression of the ‘leave the leaves’ movement is that one should leave all the decay of autumn in place until June or whenever of next year just in case a bee or lightning bug chooses to overwinter in that twig or under that leaf. It’s not a bad reminder that a tornado of leafblowers and a lawn crew which trundles off every last bit of fallen foliage is only leaving a barren wasteland of exposed soil, but it shouldn’t shame you into staring at a drift of leaves against your back door and a depressing flowerbed full of scarecrow twigs all winter. Do what you want. It’s your garden and as a gardener you’ve probably already thought about how your garden fits in with the natural world and how happy you’ve been to find it swarming with birds and insects and wildlife in general. Shame should be reserved for the desolate weed-free lawns of a golf course or the monotonous mono-plantings of some dull homeowner association. If you needed it I give you permission to trim back the dead things which offend you and remove the leaves which have become too much. Your garden will still be a refuge.

The last blooms of clematis ‘venosa violacea’ are as pretty as the first and are probably more numerous since I gave the vine a little trim after its first flush of flowers. A friend said trim it back completely in July, but I wasn’t that brave.

So that’s a lot of tough talk from someone who is likely to never have an immaculate garden to begin with. Other homeowners are complaining about a few leaves blowing into their yard and sullying their pristine turf while I’m usually wishing for a windy day to dump everything here. Most will stay where they fall but at some point a mower bag full of their chopped brothers will be spread on top. It’s a rare day when a twig or stem ends up in the trash and these days there’s not even much going to the compost pile since I tend to tuck pulled weeds and such into the depths of the borders. It may not be ideal from the perspective of the every leaf is sacred crowd, but even after a run through the mower for the sake of neatness and then a toss back onto the beds these processed leftovers still serve plenty of good.

Frost asters galore in the weedier parts of the garden. These have a decent winter structure so will stay even after death…

Mid October. Meh. If the weather were different and I cared more there would be a cleanup in progress but this year I’m not there yet and the mess is fine. You look at your own mess though and feel free to clean up whatever you want and know that I’ll have your back, and in the meantime have a great week!

Somewhat Autumnal

Sep22

Second post. Must get done….

Actually it’s only been about a week and a half since this post was started, so I guess that’s an improvement. As usual I have no excuse, I’m just easily distracted -and a bit on the lazy side- so any structured use of time almost always falls to the wayside. Fortunately it’s not April and I can get away with letting things go a bit, and trust me I have.

This was the new tulip bed along the boxwood hedge, and once they came out it became home for all the excess coleus cuttings and unplanted canna tubers. I think it looks great for September.

The steady rains all August have kept the lawn from dying and made the tropicals very happy. Even though they were all planted kind of late, the gardener was fairly responsible about feeding them here and there and keeping the weeds at bay. One of the biggest successes was the banana which was still small enough to sit next to the light all last winter, and didn’t shrivel up to nearly nothing once the weather got warmer. Instead it came outside at a reasonable time, sank its roots down, and put out leaf after leaf, each bigger than the last. Laugh if you want (since I’ve seen much larger in other Pennsylvania gardens), but until I can overwinter a hardier sort in the ground for more than a winter or two, this is a plant that has made me proud and one which I greet personally on each and every garden walk.

The stem on this beast is at least six feet tall and the leaves rise another four or five. I shall try to dig and store it, but won’t get my hopes up just yet.

The kids keep asking when the bananas will be ripe, but I don’t have the heart to tell them maybe never. I think it’s actually an edible type but yeah, the chances it survives with any decent amount of vigor for the next growing season are pretty slim given my lack of a 15 foot high, heated greenhouse that isn’t already filled. Perhaps some advice from a friend can help. He gifted me a good sized offset this spring which had been overwintered in excellent shape, but under my care from March to April it grew smaller and smaller before it was finally planted outside again and began to recover. On a good note though, it now sports a healthy double stalk and being in a decent sized pot, it should be somewhat easy to drag inside and overwinter.

Another tropical, the bulbs of tuberose are blooming now and fill the evening garden with scent. It’s a real treat, I love it.

It’s too early to mention taking things in for the winter so I’ll only do it once, but if we drift into a cooler spell of weather again I guess it will be time to get more serious. Coleus cuttings will be first as well as any lantana and geranium cuttings. They both seem to root better if taken from plants which haven’t yet experienced too many nippy nights.

The dichondra baskets have been neglected this summer and nearly dried out more times than I’ll admit, but they suffer through it quite well, and they will likely return next year. These will stay out for another month at least, they don’t mind some frost.

Besides the tropical parade, the rest of the late season annuals and lingering perennials are still trying to look fresh in spite of a turn to dry.

The potager is weedy and seedy but at least the rain has kept it green, if not full of flowers and fruit. The geranium pots have been great though, there’s a reason your grandparents grew them.

As any good gardener will be, I’m not happy enough to take the warm and sunny autumn on its own merits but instead I’m already beginning to wonder how the approaching winter will be. Our mildest winter ever was a strong El Nino winter, and going forward that’s over and we will see what a ‘normal’ winter is like these days. August was still the hottest August ever, but September? October? February? Time will tell.

A stray Begonia sutherlandii tubercle found a home here next to the porch foundation and has overwintered twice without any help from me. Returning a third year in a row might have me claiming it’s hardy-ish here.

Tropicals and semi-hardy perennials are a thing of course, but absolutely hardy things are a much less-work kind of thing. Colchicums are hardy things and it’s their season. Here’s the start of it and I think there will be more to come in the next post…. whenever that might be….

Sun? Shade? Dirt? Colchicum don’t care. The corms will begin to grow regardless of if they’re planted yet or not. I almost forgot I had this batch dug and stored in the garage, but fortunately discovered them just in time!

So hopefully this blog will feature a full batch of colchicums in the next post. They are at their absolute peak and in spite of this dry spell which keeps getting longer and longer, and this heat which seems uncomfortably out of season, the colchicum are a bright and fresh smear of color in a garden which is looking slightly tired.

One of the first to ring in the colchicum season, ‘Disraeli’ offers a rich color, large flowers, curious checkering, and a long season of bloom. It is an absolute favorite.

Last summer many of the colchicums were divided and moved to the beds alongside the house and it was a little concerning to see how many my ‘here a bulb there a bulb’ process has resulted in. Someone who likes to throw labels around wouldn’t be all that wrong if they referred to the bed as a collection but I’m going to hold off on that. I bravely stated this fall that I might give away a variety or two which aren’t my favorites, and that’s not the talk of a collector.

The pinkish flush on the freshly opened blooms of x byzantinum ‘Innocence’ fades quickly to pure white. This good doer is another beauty and also a long bloomer as fresh flowers continue to come up as the earliest fade.

Even though it’s not a collection, maybe I did relabel every clump in the last few days. I kept mixing up ‘Ordu’ and ‘Orla’ so with a bright new label that’s no longer a problem, and now there’s one less embarrassing moment as I lead tours through the plantings.

Hope your plantings are also doing well and have a great week.

Pineapple Season

Aug9

It’s pineapple season here at Sorta Suburbia, and that would be the bloom season of sorta-pineapples, aka pineapple lilies, aka Eucomis in case you were wondering. Eucomis are an easy to grow South African bulb which I’ve recently discovered are hardier than you’d think.

eucomis oakhurst sparkling burgundy seedling

‘Oakhurst’ is a form of Eucomis comosa which comes up with dark purple foliage and and stems. This seedling comes up dark but fades a bit in the heat and dry of July, but I suspect its named parent would do the same here.

The first bulbs which I risked leaving in the ground year round were a bunch of ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ seedlings which just came out of nowhere one year. Actually I sowed the seed two years before so it was entirely my fault they were here and I had more than I needed, but from my experiences they sprout easily from seed. Mine were sprinkled into a pot one January, covered with a thin layer of grit and thrown out onto the sidewalk next to the garage to sit until the freezing weather until spring when they sprouted. Simple enough, right? I’m sure you have your own methods but sometimes I feel people are too impressed when I say something was grown from seed, so let me just say don’t be. Plants do it all the time, and I find the biggest struggle is getting the gardener to actually get them in the dirt.

Seedlings of Eucomis ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ planted in too much shade near the house foundation. They would likely be darker and less-floppy in more sun.

Once you have the plants going there’s not much else to do. Mine are in full sun to part shade, decent soil, ok drainage… they’re not difficult. Since this is not always a well-cared for garden I can say with authority they don’t particularly like really poor soil or a real hot and dry location, but a little attention to watering and feeding in your own garden would fix that.

Eucomis bicolor after its first winter in the ground. The speckling on this plant is a nice touch.

The first experimental plantings of the E. comosa seedlings is now pushing probably eight years with no fussing on my part and not a single plant has been lost. Our winters can dip below zero (-18C) as a winter low and the ground freezes deeper than the bulbs are, so I’d say they’re pretty hardy. Silly me to not think that any of their pineapple lily cousins would also be hardy, but it took a friend showing a photo of his plantings online for me to get that message. I left my E. bicolor bulbs out last winter and they were also fine. Our winter was extremely mild so I can’t personally say these are also exceptionally hardy, but word is they can be.

The flower details on the blooms of Eucomis bicolor are always cool. Maybe a few more seedlings and a bigger patch of this could be justified.

I’ve also been told there’s a really good chance my dearest pet of a Eucomis could also be perfectly hardy. ‘Freckles’ is smaller growing hybrid of E. vandermerwei that has been enjoying the potted life here for at least ten years. Pot goes out in the spring, pot goes into the garage in the fall, and sits in the dry dark for six months until the process repeats. It’s a no-brain process, but some would suggest I have too many plants in pots, so perhaps this will also break free of the potted life either this summer or next spring.

Eucomis ‘Freckles’ is a lower growing plant which shows the cool purple mottling of the species E. vandermerwei. It’s a late summer bloomer and is just starting to send up its little ‘pineapples’.

Two weeks ago the gardener here was looking for empty terra cotta pots and there was nothing to be found, so he decided he was bored with his last Eucomis, E. autumnalis, so he tossed it onto the compost pile. So much for that. After all these new thoughts on hardiness he has gone through the compost, found the roots, and given it a spot in one of the beds. Autumnalis looks a little worse for wear for its ‘adventure’ but in this garden that barely stands out.

Eucomis ‘Freckles’ from a prior year. Quite an adorable little thing in or out of bloom.

So that’s it for my pineapple lily sales pitch. One disclaimer is that the bloom stalks often flop after a couple weeks, but you’ll have to see for yourself if that bothers you or is worth staking for… and you can guess what my opinion on that is… and the final fun fact is that Eucomis can be somewhat easily propagated via leaf cuttings. If you’ve never done it give leaf cuttings a try, to me it’s one of those odd things which shouldn’t work but it does. Chop a leaf into two inch sections, stick them right side up into some potting soil and wait. Small roots and eventually bulbs will form and there you go. Snake plants (Sansevieria) will also work this way, so if you’re out of pineapple lilies try a snakeplant for now.

All the best for an excellent weekend. We are weathering the downpours of tropical storm Debby today which will be followed by cooler, dryer weather and I’m not sure how I feel about the cooler part. Low 80’s is entirely seasonal but after a stretch of 90’s it sounds almost chilly and makes me think of what lies in store. Hopefully a few days of sunshine which doesn’t make you melt can make up for that. Enjoy!

Summer Blinks

Sep22

For a minute it was summer and then not. Our warm weather has faded and we’re getting a taste of autumn, with chilly nights and dewy mornings, and temperatures which make a gardener think about what’s to come.

The bulldozer path to the back of the house is fading away as new lawn sprouts and the new daylily border fills in. A purple mound of Lespedeza ‘Gibraltar’ fits in nicely with the pink and purple theme.

What’s to come? Snowdrop season of course, but not until a thousand things get done and a million plants move indoors, and a billion weeds get pulled.

I went to a snowdrop gala in March and of course ended up with a daylily, in this case ‘September Sol’, off the sales bench of Matthew Bricker. It does indeed come into bloom during September and brings a nice shine to the purple verbena masses.

So those are the good intentions, and hopefully they still amount to something because although I need more hardscape in the garden, I don’t want my paths to be paved with the good intentions which never became. Walking down that path would not make for a nice garden tour and I’d rather just stick to gravel if that’s the case.

The new grass path behind the potager is officially over-run with verbena bonariensis. I think this is far nicer than lawn would ever be so obviously I’ll wait until November at least before running the mower through.

Perhaps it’s obvious, but thankfully this will be a brief post rather than the usual babbling on about all kinds of unrelated topics. These photos were taken last week, and I hate to not remember these last joys of summer just because I was too distracted by other nonsense to get a post up. So come February hopefully a thrown-together post from a lush September will at least be better than nothing.

The potager has officially gone to seed. We’re down to a few rotting vegetables and the flowers have completely taken over.

For obvious reasons my garden never reaches the well-tended, beautifully curated stage which many of my friends’ gardens become at this time of year. There are no clumps of shapely mums and vignettes of asters and ornamental grasses, instead it’s a weedy wave of viny tangles and seedy remains… and it really suits my tastes 🙂

The ferny tendrils of cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) go from soft and innocent to smothering within days if the heat and humidity are there for it.

Or perhaps it’s possible I’ve convinced myself over the years that this is how I like my garden to look by September. There’s just no time for immaculate care when thoughts are turning to the bulbs which need planting and the cuttings which need taking, things end up getting neglected, and for the sake of the gardener’s sanity it’s better to just think all is as it should be.

This year the ‘Terrace’ was almost tame in how many pots ended up there. A summer of dirt-moving has a way of dampening the urge to pot up hundreds of cuttings…

So with everything going according to plan maybe a few considerations towards the future are in order. Lots of things should come in for the winter… but there’s only so much room…

Fuschia ‘Gartenmeister Bonstedt’ does very well in the cool winter garden but needs to be watched for spider mites. Blue Streptocarpella will also come in, and is carefree if kept on the dry side.

Going around the garden and making a plan for it all is a terrible idea. Better to start small and ignore the scope of it all until a sudden cold night forces your hand. Nothing like going around with a flashlight on a 33F night and making on the spot decisions about what you can and can’t live without. The desire to lug in a 100 pound pot filled with sharp agave foliage drops quickly when your fingertips are numb and your pajamas are soaked.

Maybe the passion flower ‘Kew Gardens’ deserves one more year. The flowers seem to only open in the evenings and I often miss them, but they are pretty cool, and I always have a weak spot for vines.

Coleus cuttings in water will be first, and then maybe I’ll drag a few caladium pots in closer to the house so they can dry off a bit. Maybe. Some lantana cuttings is another option. Eventually…

For all the effort some things get, it’s often a stray seed or corm in some leftover potting soil which does best. A handful of Bessera elegans corms were carefully potted up and then promptly rotted. Here a stray corm in some re-used potting soil is thriving.

Bah, it’s still the middle of September, there’s plenty of time. Let me just enjoy the summer flowers while I can.

This ‘Sun Parasol’ “original dark red” mandevilla or whatever they’re called right now is surprisingly easy to overwinter. Cool spot, some light, easy on the watering, and it will even try to flower all winter… unlike others (do you hear me ‘Alice DuPont’?) who promptly drop all their leaves and go dormant…

Enjoying the lingering summer flowers is even better when you can enjoy a few colchicum blooms at the same time. This month I started an incentive program where the gardener gets to transplant a few colchicum on each day he reaches his to-do list targets. To-do list targets are obviously less fun than transplanting colchicums, and they include debris hauling, concrete setting, and the endlessly boring task of lawnmowing. I think it goes without saying that my teenage children are essentially worthless for everything on the to-do list…

The always fun, tesselated flowers of Colchicum x aggripinum. It’s a neat and long blooming smaller type and I wish I had as many as I used to, but one year they decided they didn’t love it here anymore so far I’ve been unsuccessful in winning them back over.

Here’s just one un-glamorous view of the colchicum progress. The no-rocks rockgarden along the house is becoming a rocky colchicum bed, and before each new clump gets moved and planted the truck ruts need digging and loosening, and the rocks which were dumped in the ruts so the trucks could make more ruts, needed prying out and hauling off. Just to be clear, this is the reward part and not part of the to-do list, so having this fun has been a slightly drawn out process.

After division and some compost I’m expecting great things from ‘Nancy Lindsay’ and her friends. I hope to get the whole bed mulched this autumn, and maybe in the spring add a few sedum and thyme starts to fill in the bed while the colchicum go dormant.

The colchicum project seemed much more innocent when the first bulbs were getting their new spots, and it still seemed fun after the second and third clumps, but today while replanting ‘Spartacus’ a little tinge of concern came over the gardener. There appears to be a colchicum collection developing. For years I’ve been adding one or two, just to see how they compare, and as you know one or two little bulbs really don’t amount to much, but one day they do… assuming (and this takes me out on a limb) they don’t die, and apparently enough haven’t. Maybe a more honest confession would be excitement rather than concern, but let me just say next autumn should be colchi-rific and that’s a good thing, not a medical condition.

Hope your September days are full of good things and you enjoy the weekend!

In With the Old

Oct26

I’ve been ignoring the colder temperatures long enough. A sudden freeze would have made the great autumn migration much, much easier but I’d surely miss a few things next year. The weather Saturday was beautiful and it’s the first weekend in a month where I didn’t spend most of my time emptying closets or running to the Salvation Army or painting or moving furniture… So spending an afternoon moving a few plants was (almost) a treat 😉

Putting everything on the driveway as a staging area seemed like a good idea… until even the driveway was filled.

Earlier in the month I’d already taken cuttings of coleus and other favorite annuals, hauled in the caladium pots and lugged the amaryllis in, and really thought I was on a good path… but then the plants started to accumulate. Hmmmm. Shame on those plants for growing so much.

By the end of the day things looked downright tame. A few things to shove into some dark corner of the garage when it really gets cold, and my precious tree fern which will stay out as long as possible.

So right now there’s no room in the winter garden for a January coffee, but I have a few months to straighten that out. I’m sure it will all work out just like I’m sure over the next few days I absolutely won’t find a thing or two more to bring in or a handful of ‘just in case’ cuttings.

Decent temperatures and beautiful autumn light made spending all day outside a treat. It’s amazing how things have recovered since the rains returned.

I wasn’t lugging all day. It was just nice to be outside and I’m quite talented at just wandering around ‘thinking’ or sitting around and ‘contemplating’. I guess we all have our superpowers even if we don’t all get to wear the fancy tights.

The late asters are nice enough but of course I’m still far too impressed with the purple stems of the ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeweed.

One low point to this autumn is that nearly every last chrysanthemum in the potager’s chrysanthemum bed died out this past winter. In the spring I was almost happy about all the open space, but now I miss them, especially the big football forms with their huge, shaggy blooms. Who knows. The winter wasn’t all that bad and many of them had been with me for years, but these things happen. Fortunately I have backup plants, sadly not the same forms, but seeds are easy and if I want I can just collect a few seedheads this fall and within months I’ll have more than I lost… (as if I hadn’t already filled all that open space)

A mix of seedling chrysanthemums in the neglected former rock garden. Even after a summer of no-care and searing heat and drought they’ve come through with a nice show!

Who knows why chrysanthemums just die. Many of those big bushelbaskets of color sold in the fall aren’t actually hardy, and many more dry out too much to establish after the show is over, and some are just planted too late, but other times? I know all the autumn rains last year had mine extra soggy going into winter but I was still surprised every last one died. Wait, that’s not true. One plant which was decimated by some foliage disease and went into bloom nearly leafless last fall had two tiny sprigs survive. So the weakest plant survived… go figure.

The lone survivor in the the potager. The color on this chrysanthemum reminds me of the dahlia ‘Cafe au Lait’ and I’m beginning to like it, plus strong stems make it great for cutting.

Drifting aimlessly around the yard reminded me that for as productive as I was hauling other things in for the winter, the succulents that accumulated on the new stone wall this summer are still all out there. They’re all in heavy clay pots on top of that. Ugh.

Time to pay the piper. Free pots and extra cuttings sounded so harmless when I put together another 20 containers. Now they all need winter homes.

Wisdom has not followed age. I bought three more (big) terracotta pots last month when I just happened to ‘stumble upon’ a 30% off clearance sale, and I have every intention of filling them next spring. Sunday all of these came into the winter garden, even the ones I was going to leave out because I really don’t need them. Someone gave me another succulent which he knew I was eyeing. I know my mom has one which I’d like a bit of and my nephew as well. I give it two more years before this whole fiasco collapses. It’s going to be a great two years 🙂

The first snowdrops. A new season begins before the old has passed.

And then there are snowdrops. I was lukewarm for a week or two in August but now I’m just obsessing again. Snowdrops and cyclamen because they’re sprouting as well, and for a winter garden they’re also essential. And witch hazels. I see buds on those, wow it’s going to be an exciting winter. I hope it doesn’t fly by too quickly 😉

Hope you have a great week!

An End Before the Start

Mar27

Yesterday I made a point of getting outside for a few pictures before whatever happens happened. Those of you who’ve visited this blog ever probably know that this gardener has more than a passing fancy for snowdrops, and sadly this year the season has passed in a blur with other things and weather taking priority over the hope for idle days in the sunshine crawling from snowdrop clump to snowdrop clump. Instead I was out at night with a flashlight, out in the rain, or wind, or cold, and none of those scenarios make for good picture taking. It happens, it could be worse, and with several clumps disappearing or dwindling this year I guess it was as good a season as any to have fly by. Next year will be perfect I’m sure!

A grainy, just before dark photo of the ‘White Trash’ bed from about a week ago. Galanthus ‘flore peno’ and other “common”, “messy”, and “no special merit” snowdrops fill this bed, and it’s one of my favorite plantings.

We won’t dwell on the weather of course. If a gardener ever hopes to enjoy their snowdrops in this area they need to be prepared for a season which goes from an early spring thaw one week, to frigid temps and snow and ice the next, to overly warm shorts and T-shirt weather for five days, back to snow and a hard freeze. I can always stay inside, but the snowdrops can’t and sometimes end up a little beaten down.

A nice galanthus nivalis with just the tiniest green mark inside. Someday I hope to find an albino, but for now this one keeps me happy.

So here’s where the survivors are at. For you’re sake I’ll try to write less and photo more 😉

Galanthus ‘Cordelia’ a little sloppy yet hanging on and Cardamine quinquefolia just starting with its pink flowers. A few people have lodged complaints about the cardamine’s spreading ways but it looks like I’ll have to learn the hard way.

I can never speak poorly of big flowers on a non-floppy plant. ‘Imbolc’ is representing and hopefully hangs on for a while during our cold spell.

Galanthus ‘Erway’ has a nice paleness this spring which is fairly normal but not always this pronounced.

I think I show galanthus ‘Moortown’ each spring. He’s such a hefty brute.

My thoughts are always mixed on anything from sharlockii blood, but this one has turned out nice. A Belgium drop with lots of green and inner petals almost as long as the outers.

Please don’t even fall for my woe is me comments on this year’s season. Even a bad one is still better than the suffering my non-snowdropping neighbors are enduring. I see them washing cars and trying to liven up a dead yard with a few plastic Easter eggs and realize that my yard has been bursting with bulbs for the last month and more, and the garden year is already off to a good start. Missing the snowdrops is as much my own fault for not being independently wealthy as it is the cruel ups and down of the weather, and maybe a few less garden visits and ski trips would have also helped. I’ll try to work on that… maybe…

A doubled winter aconite (Eranthis ‘Gothenburg’) flowering for the first time after two other years of ‘no thanks’. Please don’t die now is my reply. In this garden new and hard to find winter aconites like to die the year after finally looking nice.

So now I have nothing to look forward to except hundreds of spring bulbs and sprouting perennials and wave after wave of new color every day! Sure there will be a few hiccups along the way, but still I can’t even imagine things being bad enough to make washing the car a decent alternative.

More bulbs popping up. The unspellable Scilla mischtschenkoana doesn’t ask for much but does fade quickly in anything warmer than sweater weather.

I don’t know how people manage self restraint around all the small ‘minor’ bulbs which could fill their gardens. I mean I do, but there are so many tempting crocus and bulb forming iris and corydalis that I really can’t judge anyone who ends up with a bed devoted to species tulips or spring blooming colchicums.

I vaguely remember these not blooming and me digging and dividing the clump. For a couple days they’ll be amazing and then the next great thing will roll along and I won’t even bother to dig out a label for an ID.

Even for someone who is the definition of restraint, things can build up. If I had any backbone whatsoever I’d mow down seedlings, dig bulblets, divide crowded clumps, and just toss the excess but I’m like one of those people who grew up poor and then for a lifetime can’t throw out a decent pair of shoes or nice cardboard box, or even throw out the last six Easter eggs even though you did manage to eat at least two dozen of the ones the kids dyed. Waste is a sin, and who wastes corydalis seedlings?

Hyacinths, corydalis, crocus, and winter aconite were never planted here. I wouldn’t even know where to start if I tried to return this to the original species peonies, single snowdrop, and Muscari azureum (both white and blue forms!)

Before I leave the subject of restraint, here’s a link to an International Rock Gardener article on >the many species and forms of winter aconite (Eranthis)<. I’m not tempted, but perhaps others will enjoy looking at all the different variations you can plant in addition to the not-common-at-all yellow.

I have no plans to show restraint towards witch hazels. They will be crowded and poorly grown but Hamamelis ‘Aphrodite’ needs more company.

I do need more spring snowflakes (Lecojum vernum). I consider them the messy big brother of snowdrops but they come in yellows and doubles and I’m forced to live with just the species form and that’s been making me sad. Not sad enough to go wash the car, but sad enough to wistfully search for other forms which exist but are separated from me by an ocean and at least seven time zones. I don’t think adding two or three new ones would count as a lack of restraint, it’s definitely more of a widening your horizons kind of thing.

The straight form of the spring snowflake (Leucojum vernum, not the summer snowflake L. aestivum, that’s different!).

Unlike most bulbs, Leucojum actually enjoy a poorly drained soil which doesn’t dry out and will suffer in a drier spot. Think riverbanks and wet meadows, and if you find a spot they like you might as well plant a few snake’s head fritallaries (F. meleagris) since they also like that same mucky kind of spot.

A nice pure white form I found a few years back. It’s a nice thing and nicely complements the “yellow tipped” ones behind them… if only they would stay yellow…

And again I’m going on too long. Let’s just photo along and get through hellebores and the current weather.

The first hellebores are starting. A couple nice yellow seedlings.

A surprise anemone form hellebore seedling. I was hoping for a double, but this might even be better.

Construction continues. Maybe today I’ll bundle up and try and dig out the snowflakes and hostas which probably won’t come up through the two feet of excavated fill, but then I’ll look at the rocks and dirt in the pond and feel guilty about not addressing that.

Yesterday it wasn’t raining and snowing too much (just like last Sunday which was the only other time I’ve been out during the day lately) so I spent a few hours scraping fill off the lawn and hoping that at least half the yard can be sort-of back to normal for the year. For what it’s worth “scraping fill off the lawn” means shoveling wheel barrow after wheel barrow of hard-packed rock and dirt and then trying to find the old turf underneath and then exposing enough with a rake so that it comes back to life. I suspect in another week or two it will be mostly smothered and dead so that’s why I’m trying now. In spite of the biting wind… and on again off again rain showers…. and frequent snow squalls….

The snow stopped melting and the light was fading, so the lawn is as good as it’s going to be.

I might not like it, but most of the garden doesn’t mind a little snow and sleet this time of year. We will see what happens tonight though. It’s supposed to be frigid again.

Back in the day I never even imagined I’d have bunches of hardy spring cyclamen here in the mountains of Pennsylvania but then they happened 🙂

I might look at the pond this afternoon. We will see. The winter garden might be a nicer option with its somewhat warm temperature and lack of an icy wind and gloomy skies. It’s a jungle and I need to trim it back which of course means cuttings since I can’t waste a single shoot. Obviously these will be cuttings I do not need.

A patriotic blend of geraniums, oxalis, and streptocarpella. The blue streptocarpella is much too large.

Cuttings galore and I think I should chop everything first and then see how much I can use afterwards. Right now I’m not sure if the water I throw on this thicket even hits the pots underneath.

The amaryllis have been nice. This is a seedling a friend gave me and I might need a big pot of it, even though it multiplies like a pair of miss-sexed hamsters.

I’m going to have way too many geranium cuttings. What to do, what to do…

…and the primrose seedlings have come along nicely. I can sit at my little table contemplating seed orders all the while enjoying the promise of spring and an occasional wiff of primula fragrance.

So that’s where things are at and I’m hoping for a few less-busy weeks to come. In the meantime thanks for sticking it out and if you’re relieved over the missing snowdrops don’t get your hopes up too much. Cooler weather means the season may stretch out the further north you go and I still haven’t ruled out northern snowdrop visits 😉

Have a great, restrained, week!

The Winter Garden 2022

Jan14

Monday morning was one of the coldest days of the year and this weekend is also set to drop as low as 1F (-17C), and although we are only 14 days into the year that’s about as cold as Sorta Suburbia has been in a while. The temperatures only last about a night or two and the ground is still barely frozen, but only time will tell how these surprisingly normal lows will work with my new, optimistically mild, global warming planting plan full of autumn blooming snowdrops and zone 7 Crinum lilies.

Happier plantings are sheltered in the garage under fluorescent shoplights. They’re experiencing a few ‘chilly’ nights, but nothing even close to the freezing cold outside.

A better gardener would put this cold-induced break to good use, planning seed orders and organizing planting plans, safe in the knowledge that borderline plantings are well protected, but all this gardener wants to do is eat. Not just hearty stews and roasted potatoes, but more so late night bags of chips and “one more” handful of m&ms followed by a big glass of milk. Then some ice cream. Then maybe another look in the fridge, just in case. Outside just a few witch hazels are fenced, and not a single snowdrop is bucketed, but inside there’s been a lot of attention to sitting around and… eating….

Also safe inside are the plants too precious and too tender to abandon outside. They don’t do much all winter, but they’re something nice to look at while nibbling pretzels.

I can think of no better place to sit (while snacking) than the winter garden. When it’s dark out I can almost convince myself that this array of shoplights in the just-above-freezing back of the garage is actually a greenhouse or uber fancy conservatory. When the weather is cold it’s a room filled with green to hang out in, watering, puttering, pruning, plucking… doing all the stuff that the cold makes uncomfortable outdoors.

My official coffee drinking, seed cleaning, label writing, phone browsing, beer sampling, winter patio seat in the winter garden. I heard a crack last weekend and that’s got me slightly concerned about all the m&m’s, but that’s something to worry about in May.

There have been a few watershed moments in this year’s slightly excessive winter garden adventure. Ooops. I admitted that the winter garden is a little “extravagant”, but I blame it on last winter when I killed off a shameful amount of potted cyclamen. Cyclamen have been the stars of my winter garden for a few years, but then suddenly a winter of lazy, careless watering did in a bunch of them. This fall I needed backup plants. A visit to an open garden and a cutting swap started me off. The Amish country and various nurseries added a few more. Friends helped. Cuttings for overwintering added to it all. It’s all reaching a quite pleasant crescendo in my opinion.

Blue streptocarpella and flower buds on a red salvia. The salvia is being overwintered, and the buds should probably be clipped off… but I do like flowers 😉

Recently on Facebook a friend shared an article about the “dark side” of plant collecting. The home time and isolation of the pandemic had set unprepared gardeners off on a vicious binge of buying and collecting, and people were amassing hoards that amounted to hundreds of plants. “amateurs” my friend commented, and we laughed. I read the article myself and to be honest it made me smile to read about these plant collections and see the smiling faces of such happy gardeners. I think I might have missed the dark in it all.

A cool aloe which I couldn’t resist. ‘Snow Fox’ will join my other potted succulents next summer but for now just sits dry and mostly dormant on the dimmer end of the bench.

Just out of curiosity I counted pots in the winter garden. Normally anything under 6 inches doesn’t count, but this time I just went ahead and easily reached 150 pots back there. Hmmm. Then I took a few more cuttings and made it 152, just to slip a little further into the dark side.

This succulent comes in off the deck and spends the next three months flowering. I love it. Every little bit of leaf off the flower stems will try to root, so of course I made another pot of cuttings with those.

At least taking cuttings keeps my hands busy and out of the chip bag. I joke about not having the garden prepared, but at least my hoarding skills have me ‘winter gardening’ prepared. You can never have too many saved pots, and emergency bags of potting soil on hand. It’s awkward sneaking out into the frigid outdoor lot of the box store to try and wrestle a frozen bag of potting soil into your cart, so have it on hand in August so that you don’t have to make up some lame lie about ‘I don’t know, my wife told me she needed potting soil tonight’ when the cashier asks you what in the heck you’re doing. At least I can plan ahead in one area.

I’m quite pleased with how the cane begonia cuttings are doing. They’ll need bigger pots soon enough, but of course I’m prepared for that when the time comes.

Sometimes a rare ray of good fortune may shine upon you. A friend shocked me last year when she informed me they were officially downsizing and leaving their mature garden behind. “I think there will be a few things you’ll want” she said, and of course I agreed, but it was really all the accumulated trash like leftover pots and soil, bits of twine, scraps of fencing, pottery shards, opened bags of soil conditioners that I really wanted. Of course she knew that already. Only another gardener would want this stuff, and when I picked up a carload a few weeks ago I had to agree that I did want it.

More begonias and a cool Oxalis triangularis (maybe ‘Fanny’) which I was given a couple rhizomes of. I’m halfway tempted to pull out and plant a few of the purple leaved ones stored dormant under the shelf as companions to this one.

She gave me a box of terracotta pots which she may have never used. They’re small and there are a bunch of them and they’re much more trouble to move than lightweight plastic but I’m far more scared of them than I am of hundreds of hoarded houseplants because I really love them. What the *heck* is wrong with me that I’m staring at a box of clay pots thinking they’re so nice. I could understand if they were antique cloches for protecting delicate snowdrops during an ice storm, intricate wire topiary forms, but they’re stupid clay pots. I’m worried about what might happen if I start cruising garage and estate sales. I think I might buy every one I come across.

Clay pots and grandma’s geraniums. Cool people don’t seem to like pelargoniums but such a nice edging of variegation on the leaf, and the flowers are so delicate.

At least clay pots don’t have any calories… that I know of…. and so that must make a few too many of them a harmless distraction. As of today I only use them for succulents and a few potted bulbs, so even these are too many, but I really need more. A birthday is coming up. I wonder if putting ‘old, dirty terracotta pots’ on the birthday list could replace the usual underwear and socks?

Another aloe (‘Blue Elf’) with a few flower buds forming. I hope a lack of water and cool temps can keep them from developing too fast. Although I love winter blooms, I’d rather see them come up strong outside rather than spindly and weak in here.

So as usual I don’t really know how this post ended up where it has with underwear and socks. Let me try and re-focus with African violets. My mother used to grow them and so did my aunt. My grandmother grew them. They used to be Saintpaulia, but now I see they’re Streptocarpus sect. Saintpaulia and I’m not sure how that changed anything but I also know that about a year or so ago I needed to grow them again. I know these urges, I resisted. I almost made it but then cracked last fall and bought one and then I asked a friend for cuttings. I found online sources but only looked. I found one marked down. I guilted a spouse into buying me one at the grocery store after a few ‘admit it, you’re never going to wear that, I can’t buy you anything’ Christmas returns. I now have three violets plus two cuttings and I think I’m ok but then realized this afternoon I volunteered to stop at the store just because I thought they might have more. Hmmmm.

An African violet. This weekend will be cold and maybe I’ll take a cutting. I don’t need more but whatever.

African violets don’t have calories either. As far as I know adding another would be a victimless crime even if I’m lying to myself about picking up milk for the kids when I stumble across it. So what if I end up in a grocery store that’s 35 minutes away, it’s always good to shop around.

Have an excellent weekend, stay warm, and fuel that furnace responsibly… even if some of the fuel is chocolate, beer, and cheese 😉

Happy Halloween!

Nov1

Surprise of surprises the month of October has passed and there still remains a general air of pleasantness and overall contentment with the autumn season. Even as the wind and rain buffet trick-or-treaters, the gardener has yet to mention death, gloom or futility, in spite of light frosts and dropping leaves and various ghouls and other undead wandering the neighborhood.

Fall color seems especially bright this year. The view towards the tropical garden doesn’t really seem all that tropical anymore but it’s not bad at all in my opinion.

To be honest I’m not 100% sure a ghoul qualifies as undead but I am sure that the garden still has plenty of life in it. Last weekend was excellent weather for outdoor labor and even this gardener got a few things done. Mulching was probably the most rewarding job and being that I love mulching, and free mulch is even better, it was almost a struggle to wait until a respectable 9am before making the first run to the town’s free mulch pile.

The new hellebore garden is finally fit to show. Stepping stones have been leveled, mulch spread, and now all that’s missing is a nice blanket of leaves on top. Nature will oblige I’m sure.

Free mulch around here isn’t the fanciest thing, but I’m still thrilled my friend Paula inspired me to go looking for it again. I can head out, fill a couple buckets and an old trash can, and pull back into the garage in eleven minutes flat, which isn’t all that unreasonable and compares very favorably to the time I would have been sitting around “resting” anyway. In all I made four runs, which quickly adds up to forty minutes, but since two of the trips included picking up or dropping off children I still think I’m not doing too bad.

Orange is the color of the week. Tonight’s wind and this weekend’s frost will change the picture but for now I love it.

Besides mulching and mowing, a few other things were checked off of the to-do list. Stage one of tender plant triage includes cuttings of the most cool-weather sensitive things such as coleus, and that was completed a couple weeks ago. Stage two is dragging all tender potted things closer to the garage and off the deck. Stage three will be the end to procrastination, and means dragging them all in when frost threatens (Friday night), and then Stage four will be all the hardier things such as potted geraniums and rosemary which can handle a frost, but resent a freeze. It’s kind of late for a hard frost this year, so I’ve been enjoying a nice drawn out process where things are a little less hectic, and a lot more organized.

Some late season blooms on the Tatarian aster ‘Jindai’. A delay in a hard freeze means this slowpoke has had enough time to put on a nice show this year.

A beautiful fall, a relaxed pace in the garden, projects getting done. It all still seems so remarkably positive that I almost hesitate to bring up a dark cloud, but it’s there nonetheless. Deer have made my garden a regular stop on their nightly forays. It’s not unusual for them to come through as they grow restless in the autumn, but this year they really seem to like what they’ve found. The little piles of ‘pellets’ seem to tell me they’re spending quite some time here at night and the stripped leaves and beheaded chrysanthemums tell me what they’ve been doing.

I love this tender salvia which went in as part of the autumn upgrade to these containers, but I also loved the purple oxalis that used to fill the front. Stems are all that remain.

This gardener hopes they move on during the winter. Maybe the colchicum flowers they ate will upset their tummies enough to make them wander off to greener pastures, or maybe the cyclamen flowers left a bad taste in their mouth… but I really suspect they just liked adding a bit of exotic flavor to the diet. In any case you can probably guess who has been encouraging the neighborhood hunters to shoot local this year…

There’s been some activity on the berm. A close close look may reveal the small green sprays of new ‘Green Giant’ arborvitae as well as a few other tiny things. In about 15 years maybe I’ll post another picture to see if it’s amounted to anything.

Don’t let a few deer nibbles give off the wrong impression. It’s still a remarkable autumn and I’m quite pleased with the progress and with the garden… even if the days are becoming rudely short and time outside is becoming annoyingly limited. With that in mind I’ll leave you with something exceptionally positive.

The first snowdrops are up. The fall blooming Galanthus reginae-olgae ‘Tilebarn Jamie’ looks fantastic amongst the autumn leaves, and it’s just one of a few which are in bloom this week.

The first of the little snowdrop treasures are too precious to run the risk of facing the elements outdoors, so of course they’ll have to face the risks of a fickle gardener indoors and hopefully that works out well. A few fall and winter bloomers did survive outside last year but not enough to give me the confidence to gamble with these, so in another two or three weeks these will also migrate to the winter garden alongside other plants too special to give up. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the company while we wait for the garden to thaw out again 🙂

6 Years and a Snow Day

Jan29

At least it’s so cold there’s no mud.

Construction on the border wall has halted for the winter. The whole thing has been shaped and smeared with a nice layer of topsoil, and all that’s left to add is a row of spruce along the top. Dark, gloomy, rooty, overbearing spruce that shall eventually loom over my sunny garden. As you can see I’m still trying to be optimistic about it all.

The Wall

We’re home today waiting for the snow to fall and that seems like the perfect time to get in a few pictures and celebrate an anniversary. For me January is an agonizingly slow gardening month, and apparently that was also the case six years ago when in a moment of boredom I found out just how easy it was to start a free online blog through WordPress. Six years and six thousand snowdrop pictures later I’m still here and although the heyday for blogs seems to have peaked and waned I’m more than happy to keep going on more than I need to about my somewhat suburban, somewhat middle of nowhere Pennsylvania garden.

The only bit of winter interest I could find in the bleak and cold garden. The red twigged ‘Midwinter Fire’ dogwood will be fine in this week’s arctic blast, but all bets are off on the Southern magnolia seedlings.

Over the years this gardener has been slowly learning a thing or two but it’s always an uphill battle. This winter’s “learning opportunity” was not having enough snowdrops and cyclamen to fill my winter garden. It was a trifecta of bad decisions and luck which began with me planting out all the potted snowdrops, me not buying any bulk snowdrops for forcing, and me leaving the dormant cyclamen tubers in a spot which took on the brunt of last summer’s endless rainfall. Then I brilliantly chose to reduce the number of geraniums under lights. In hindsight it’s all my fault, but fortunately I have some experience coping with that as well 🙂

There’s like three cyclamen in bloom when there should be a tray-full. But at least it’s clean since the seed saving mess is all packed up and off my little man-cave table.

Since the winter garden is kind of a flop this year, my natural response is to go all out and make it even bigger! The area which hosts my grow area was originally built as a workshop, and I’d been using it for tools and storage and some of the messier projects, but enough of that.

The cyclamen pots sometimes freeze on a cold and windy day, but this set of lights is further from the drafty windows and can hopefully stay above freezing even on the coldest day. Four geraniums (Pelargoniums) are all I saved from last year…

After these pictures were taken I hauled everything home-improvement and woodshop related out and started moving lights and tables into hopefully “better” spots. Most is still a complete mess but at the far end of the back room, near the furnace where it always stays warm, I’ve already set up two lights for the coleus and other goodies which need a reliably warm spot.

Kind of prison cell-block looking, but the plants don’t seem to mind. Hopefully in a few weeks things will grow and I can move a few under the second light table (not really visible in the back) and make this area a decent growing spot.

There are still a number of little things I have to deal with in the main (colder) area such as a leaky foundation, burst water pipes, and electrical issues but I’m sure that will just clear up practically on its own and I’ll be planting again in no time. For now though it’s keeping me off the internet and slowing down my new-plant-buying compulsions that all gardeners face at this time of year.

I did not buy this, and in my book that almost counts as saved money… and if you keep with that logic approx $1,500 US would make for an excellent plant budget!

Maybe in a few weeks there will be something slightly less depressing to look at in the winter garden. Most years this is a pleasant hideaway to escape the cold and brown that lurks outside but so far the winter of 2019 is still a work in progress. We’ll see though. It’s remarkably easy to fill up these light tables and come to think of it there are still a few potted primula outside that I could probably chip out of the ice and drag inside before the snow and cold become too unreasonable. Hmmmmm.

Stay warm!

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Category Archives: overwintering tropicals