Goodies from Far Reaches Farm

Jan27

Gardeners often find their passion when the kids fly the nest, the first house is purchased, or maybe at retirement. I was an odd child. I planted tree seedlings in the sandbox and collected seedheads while on the family vacation. I remember one Christmas when in addition to playdoh and matchbox cars I added bulbs to the list. Somehow Santa found a few wood hyacinth in December, and I was a happy kid when the presents were opened.

My parents were the sensible type though, and although a lot of the lawn was turned over for flowers, they insisted I take it easy so that the yard wasn’t a complete burden when I moved on. They were right of course. The college years, first apartments, moving around to different states, all those other things in life that interfere with gardening happened, and it’s only now twenty something years later that I’m settled down enough to really have some fun. I can’t afford a fancy car-midlife crisis, but I can still swing a few overpriced snowdrops while also keeping the kid’s college funds intact. Here’s a treasure from Far Reaches Farm in Washington state. A friend tipped me off to a few snowdrops at this nursery (very reasonably priced for named snowdrops), and although shipping cross country during a polar vortex isn’t exactly normal plant buying procedure, I’m sitting fat and happy here, all hunkered down on the Pennsylvania tundra with my brand new galanthus “John Gray”. galanthus john gray I also picked up ‘Blewbury Tart’. Maybe she’ll grow on me as the little tart clumps up but for now I’m still lukewarm to her small sideward facing congested bloom. Both of my new snowdrops show up on ‘best growing’ or ‘favorite snowdrop’ lists, so I’m pretty sure that even when they’re out in the garden among all the other snowdrops they should someday make me proud.

Of course when shipping cross country it’s foolish to buy just two plants. Far better to fill the box, so I added two primrose plants. This one is primula vulgaris ssp. sibthorpii, an English type primrose that has a reputation for doing better through the dry, hot spells that other primrose generally don’t like here. The second (and third bonus!) primrose are in a cold garage corner (still dormant), but this one with it’s blooms already coming up goes right in to add to the winter garden! primula vulgaris ssp sibthorpii

I loved my Far Reaches Farm order. Premium plants packed to perfection, communication was great, and the primula are so well grown they could even be divided now if I were so inclined. Just looking at their website today I could have easily filled another even larger order with cool arisameas and species roses…. but I should really do a one month cool off period for any more new plant orders (the budget being blown as it is!) For now I’ll have to be satisfied with the winter garden…. for as long as it lasts…. the cold is creeping into the garage and the last polar plunge has pots in the corners of the garage frozen solid.

All these exciting new treats make me wonder why I ever bothered to overwinter those tired old tender plants from last year! They only look marginally better this winter after having spent most of their time under the grow lights, and I think the trouble’s not worth it, so next year it’s back into the near dark of the garage. I know come May it will have been worth taking them in. Maybe if I’m bored during next week’s not-going-over-freezing weather I’ll repot the geraniums and start giving them a little water. It will be nice to have some summer flowers growing again, and they shouldn’t mind the cool garage temperatures at all.

The Foundation Planting

Jan22

Our latest arctic blast has got me going through old pictures, and I found a few that have been sitting around for a while. They’re all about the bed along the front of the house, and they all relate to a redesign I attempted this past spring. Let me know what you think!

The house we live in now was built by my wife’s grandparents in the late 1950’s, and is probably still considered stylish by many. Unfortunately we don’t share that retro-Italianate taste in ranches and set about to change things up while remodeling. This was our front view circa spring 2009, not long after we moved in. retro landscaping The combination of toddler, new baby, and home renovations is a fun mix, and outside changes were mostly put onto the back burner, but that summer I did manage to get out the salmon colored edging and covered the colorful red bark mulch with a more natural shade. I’m not saying it looked better, but at least it’s a little less sterile looking.If I was forced to give an answer I would probably say I hate the orangey color of our brick. We’re stuck with it though, and since there’s not much of a design flair in me the collector gene took over, and all the cuttings and divisions I collected easily found a home in the vacant mulch beds. By 2011 the mess was spreading and in an attempt to reign in the disorder I consulted with the ‘can’t beat em join em” theory. I tried to embrace the orange by entering into a red phase. I figured if I planted an even brighter scarlet then perhaps it would be bright enough to distract viewers from the orange brick…. or maybe I was trying to offend the neighbors, I don’t know- but I would like to challenge anyone out there to show me an example of red salvia used tastefully 🙂

Maybe Secretly I delighted in reds and chartreuse, and I think I still do….. just not in the front bed highlighting the orange brick. This lovely combo has been saved and moved to the tropical bed to face down the already-overwhelmingly tasteful white vinyl privacy fencing there…. I’m not sure it looks much better there, but at least I’m sparing the neighbors from this assault of color. (fyi the hummingbirds loved it)

Now what to do? The next year I had no enthusiasm for the bed without my lovely coleus and salvia. A few perennials filled in to give it a fuller look, but it still lacks something. The blue spruce was getting too big for under the window, and the Chamaecyparis too tall….. and I was getting tired of trimming the silly pompom juniper. So late that fall I laid out a bed expansion. Truth be told I over estimated the space available for tulips, so after lining out the new border I dug tulips in all around in the lawn and then left the grass for spring removal. That spring as the tulips came up through the overturned sod, I finished digging under the rest of the grass. digging under the turf

Moving the spruce was no picnic, and I almost thought it would die (considering how many roots I cut) but I think it will be much better off in the new position, and give a nice anchor to the end of the bed. Fortunately for me, just when the shrub moving started to get too back-breaking, a buddy stopped by to help.

Soooo, here’s the finished product. I moved a small paperbark maple over a few feet to be included in the bed, lined it with blues fescue divisions, and placed three tiny holly bushes where the spruce was. Against all other urges I tried to limit the plant choices and plant in groups. The curve is a little odd, but I’ll work on that during the next expansion 😉

With mulch applied and tulips blooming, it didn’t look half bad, but to be honest I still didn’t like it. (one of the reasons you rarely see pictures of this border)

I do like the yucca “color guard”. It and the blue fescue seem to be a nice fit for this border. yucca colorguard with blue fescue Blues, yellows , and greens seem to complement the house better than all the loud mixed up flower colors. For a couple weeks I didn’t mind this look, even as the tulip foliage yellowed and died off. But then boredom and excess plants struck, and I was back to my old ways of sneaking in a few new plants here and there.

Red cabbage wasn’t the worst color to add, but maybe it was just a little inappropriate for a front yard foundation planting. Coleus crept in again, and the sunflower seedlings looked so innocent in the early summer…. but the lavender with the yucca and blue fescue kept it respectable.

Sunflower explosion. Still better than my red experiment, but not yet the look I was going for.

Maybe annuals are just not a good choice for this bed. I’ll rethink it next year and maybe skip the dahlias too 🙂 For now I’ll use the excuse that they distract you from the too-small hollies planted under the window…. better to be distracted than to be downright bored I think…. By the way those hollies better get growing, I want them nice and big and prickly by the time my little daughter starts to consider things like sneaking out a window or meeting some Romeo who comes by throwing pebbles.

The border last month (before winter and winter boredom hit).

Four things: bigger plants, get rid of the grasses, remove the tall evergreen, and stick to a mellow color palette…. and of course expand the bed just a few more feet 🙂 Any other suggestions? I know there will be some good ones and I’m looking forward to hearing them as well as hearing some more criticism. I can take it, and I’m hoping it will get me back on the path that leads to me finally liking this bed!

Daylight savings time

Jan19

During daylight savings time I’m not entirely sure where all the saved light goes, but after getting to work in the dark and leaving in the dark, I’d like to pretend a little shows up in my winter garden. Ok, winter garden is a pretty fancy label for my shoplight in the back of the garage but in a family that calls the vegetable garden “the farm” and one apple tree “the orchard”, it makes sense. I cleaned things up a little with a plastic liner and gravel base and I’m more pleased than ever. My only complaint is I should have used a sand base to place the pots on, a sort of ‘sand plunge’ that would distribute the watering better. Looks like that’s the plan for next year.

Things seem late, maybe because of the cold spells or my late setup and start-of-watering, but from the looks of things it should pick up soon. More of the cyclamen coum are sending up blooms including the darker ‘Meaden’s Crimson”This is my current favorite though. It’s got a nice pink shade that darkens around the petal edges giving almost a bicolor effect. The seedlings from last winter are also recovering well from my neglect. For about the first year of their lives these cyclamen hederifolium will grow quickly sending up new and larger leaves if kept cool and watered with a little fertilizer. Once they get past a certain point, around their first birthday, they either get too big or get too old (I’m not sure) and no amount of light, water, cool or warm will keep them actively growing through the winter. They just sit there until warmer weather and drought bring on dormancy. In this batch of seedlings I like the silver leaf in the center with it’s slight pink tinge. Maybe it will hold onto this as it grows, but I’ve seen other babies play this trick and it never lasts.

More snowdrops are coming into bloom. I don’t think any of these are galanthus woronowii (like the label said) since they just don’t have the glossy green leaves that they should, but the blooms are welcome anyway. forced snowdrops

The first of many Van Engelen clearance sale bulbs are blooming. I can’t hold them back any more! It’s difficult to tell from the picture but these are barely half the size of the others. Still nice though as more snow falls outside.I have a birthday coming up. I’m considering gifting myself two more shoplights rather than endlessly wishing for a greenhouse. It’s not quite the same but it’s a start!

disclaimer: I guess daylight savings time is technically the summer time change, but just like I’m desperate for sun I was also desperate for a title 🙂

January Thaw

Jan13

This is a post only a gardener could love…. and even at that it would need to be a gardener stuck in the cold and gray of a Northern January. Only a cabin fever gardener would care about the first tiny green sprout of a snowdrop coming up among the freezer-burnt hellebore foliage. first snowdrop sprouts

Just a few days after temperatures dropped to -6F (-21C), the warmth has returned, the ground is thawing and I’m back outside poking for the first signs of spring. The snowdrops (galanthus elwesii) seemed way too early but then after checking last year’s notes I saw the first was open January 31st last year, and I suppose we’re right on schedule. Using this as a clue I checked the seed pots and saw minute sprouts there. Yay! These little babies might have to come in under the lights, a pot like this is something I might have to check every day! **btw there are two tiny sprouts, just in case you can’t see them 🙂

Elsewhere in the garden some of the snowdrops (also galanthus elwesii) forced under lights last year are also ready for the new season. I keep throwing more mulch on them to slow them down, but they insist on coming up and facing the frigid ice and blowing snow unprotected.I wish I cold post a couple witch hazel blooms, but mine is refusing to bloom this year. It does that, going on and off depending on its mood. So in a desperate bid for anything interesting, here are a few colchicum sprouts already showing. Colchicum are another plant that insists on worrying me with a too-early showing.One plant that did not appear to enjoy the polar vortex is this cyclamen coum. The warm front that preceded the artic blast melted off all our snow cover and these little guys were forced to endure the straight on winds without any windbreaks or mulch cover. I’m hoping the dark shriveled green of the leaves is not a sign of death…..To leave off on a good note this hellebore “HGC Silvermoon” is only showing the typical winter foliage damage. It’s in a full sun position but was engulfed by a neighboring catmint plant during the summer. The plant doesn’t seem to care and I’m looking forward to a nice show soon (now that I can see it again!) So that’s it from here. Not much, but it’s always nice to be able to get out there for a look around during the daylight hours. It gives me time to contemplate failed projects such as the leaking pond shell, the hole of which is holding more water than when the pond liner was in there. In my head I will fix it and end up happy….. right now it just annoys me whenever I pass.But it’s nice to be outside doing something other than shoveling snow. There’s still a month at least before any thoughts of spring become legitimate, so I need to take it easy. Another good cold snap would do well to cool this spring fever off, but I’m worried about what more indoor computer time would do. Right now the budget is blown for spring and it has a lot to do with that easy click that brings plant goodies right to your door….. there’s still a long way to go, and I hope you’re doing better than I’ve been!

Opening day for the winter garden

Jan5

There’s only so much I want to do outdoors while the snow is blowing and the temperatures drop. It looks beautiful and we have plenty of cozy winter gear but unless I have a snow shoveling job to do I’d rather just admire the whiteness from inside the house. So instead of bundling up, I dusted off the shop light and set up my little winter garden. These cyclamen coum and cyclamen hederifolium are hardy enough to overwinter outdoors easily but I’m sure I’d miss them too much under the snow, so it’s nice to have them under lights and in the garage. Plus with blooms starting, it’s time to give them a nicer spot than the dim, dusty windowsill.The snowdrops also need more light, I try to keep them back by holding them in the coolest corner of the garage but they have their own growing timetable. The first of this bunch bloomed in November and now I’m happy to see the rest starting. My apologies for the mess and dirt and less than attractive cardboard backdrop…. no Martha Stewart gardening here.Last winter’s cyclamen seedlings also appreciate the lighting. They didn’t sprout until temperatures cooled in the fall but will now grow and reach a decent size for planting out next spring.

With the lights on, these cyclamen will get more regular watering and we’re going to pretend it’s spring 🙂 There are new blooms just under the gravel waiting to come up, and if it’s between looking outside and looking at this, I’ll take the flowers.Not a bad way to start off the new year. It sure beats the -9F (-23C) I saw on my drive to work the other day. Stay warm!

Wrapping the holidays back up

Jan1

Happy New Year!

It’s been fun, but New Year’s day marks the end of winter break and tomorrow means a return to work, so to prove that I haven’t been slacking for the entire holiday season here are a few highlights. They’re all kind of off-garden-topic but lately I’ve been lost in seed lists and plant offerings and not much real work has been completed…. other than cleaning and eating and cleaning and assembling Christmas presents and repeating as necessary!

Snow came and went and then came again for the entire month of December and for some reason coats and gloves are always just inconvenient for anyone under the age of 16.

There was plenty of holiday decorating and holiday traditions but this year we broke away from the standard gingerbread and went with a sugar cookie version. The kids also insisted they could decorate the whole thing themselves…… so far so good, but I’ll spare you from a picture of the finished product 🙂 There was shopping….. the less said of that the better…. but I did get to cross the IKEA Swedish meatball lunch off my to-experience list. We made it down to Longwood for their Christmas display…. Unfortunately we did not purchase tickets beforehand so ended up waiting two hours before being allowed entry. I knew that might be a possibility but wasn’t sure what time we would be there, since morning snow delayed us for 2 hours and then traffic delays added another hour. But I hope the people at Longwood would have worked with us had our times been way off, so next time I’ll try for tickets beforehand. The kids were great though, and didn’t seem bothered at all by the delay… but I was a little disappointed we couldn’t see much outside while the sun was still shining.The miniature train display is always the highlight of the trip.

Inside the greenhouses the display is always special. In the cooler houses cyclamen rule, but poinsettias, amaryllis, orchids, and hundreds of other plants pack the beds and arrangements. winter flowers at longwood conservatory One of the centerpieces was the tree fern room. Always flooded with a thin sheet of water, this year Granny Smith and Rome apples were arranged into a floating flourish of color. The hanging “chandelier” isn’t too shabby either!And then back outside to finish up the outdoor decorations…. it’s really an amazing display!

To finish up the holidays, the next day we headed out to Omi and Opa’s house on Long Island, NY. Their snow had all melted so it was perfect running and playing weather. Between wrestling with cousins and uncle piggyback rides there was a little history at the Old Field Lighthouse. And always a visit to the beach, with a ton of rock, shell and driftwood collecting!And then back home to face the new year and the next winter storm system…. and to emerge from winter hibernation.

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and is ready for January. The next post will be back to plants, now that the winter garden is set up and running and snowdrops and cyclamen are waking up!

Christmas countdown

Dec17

Just about a week left till the big day and there’s no question it looks like winter here. The kids are on their third snow day, but even with all the winter weather I just checked the extended forecast and have the feeling there will be no white Christmas. Rain and 60F (15C) for the weekend.

But it will still look seasonal here. This year I was finally able to harvest enough evergreens and twigs from the garden to put something together for winter, and although it’s not much, it does make me feel vindicated for not bothering to trim up the yews into their traditional meatball shapes along the foundation.Obviously I didn’t invest too much time in this display 🙂 An armful of yew trimmings, a bunch of dogwood twigs, all dropped into an empty pot with a few cheap plastic balls. For a second smaller pot, same recipe, just with sumac twigs rather than dogwood. I really need more winter diversity. I’m looking forward to the day when I can add holly and fir and maybe a couple golden conifers and rose hips… I need to get planting!

In the meantime snowdrops will have to do. Here’s the bunch from VanEngelen all ready for covering up. There are too many for the winter garden so I’ll have to see if things thaw out enough over the weekend to bury them in a leaf pile or something outside. In the meantime they can begin rooting inside on the cool garage floor. For those who wonder about these things, out of my 200 clearance bulbs 194 looked perfect for planting. For a bulb often recommended to be purchased “in the green”, these snowdrops (elwesii) seem to have survived their dry storage just fine. I think the traditional snowdrops (nivalis) might have more of a problem with drying out.Now if I can only get moving on a few other things, I’ve been remarkably lazy lately and spend most of my time browsing other cooler blogs!

That wasn’t smart 3.0

Dec7

Yesterday afternoon my Brent and Becky bulbs arrived….. did I mention I bought quite a few during their end of the season clearance sale? So knowing the weather report I was out in the dim light and freezing rain getting things into the ground before the snow and cold came. Bulbs go in quick when you’re wet and freezing, and I did pretty good although there was at least one shout from the house about catching pneumonia or what not…. I beat the snow by at least two hours 🙂 first snowfall on deck

That was a close call since the weatherman is predicting more snow tomorrow and lows around 7F (-14C) for next week, and things will surely freeze solid. Sensible people are finished for the year, unfortunately I have a stubborn streak and a history of stupid ideas put into action. Brent and Becky was sold out of the 50 snowdrop bulbs I ordered so they were missing from my shipment (such is the risk of a late season order). Instead of accepting my situation, I somehow ended up at Van Engelen’s website this morning and clicked OK to 200 more snowdrops (plus a couple hyacinth). Not the smartest move. Better check the potting soil supply 😉

Get those seeds planted!

Dec7

Not that she was bragging, but Amy over at MissingHenryMitchell posted about having her new cyclamen seeds planted at least a full week or two before things finally kicked into gear over here…. (and she even got them a few days later than me!) But peer pressure finally did its magic and I got my own cyclamen going. My five selections from Green Ice Nursery in the Netherlands went into water filled baby food containers (fyi it doesn’t come in glass jars anymore) with a tiny bit of dish soap mixed in to help break the surface tension and wet the seed. cyclamen seed

A body in motion tends to stay in motion, so while the seeds sat for their overnight soak, I kept going and decided to plant as many spare seeds as were in my little seed box. Most everything is fair game, the only exceptions being some hot weather annuals who’s seed would freeze to death, some biennials which would be better sown in mid summer (why bother earlier, they won’t bloom till the following year anyway), and some plants which I’ll start indoors early for a head start. Today’s seeds (mostly perennials) are going outside to brave the winter and then hopefully sprout in the spring. My first step is line up pots and shove a scrap of newspaper into the bottom to keep the soil from falling out the drain holes.

I’m not a serious seed sower, I don’t scrub the pots clean with a 10% bleach solution, I’m careless with my soil mix, and I don’t research the exact germination needs of my seeds (all good ideas). If you have some special seeds or want to take a dip in the waters of serious seed starting science, I’d suggest this post by Nancy Ondra over at Hayefield blog. The stuff on the Deno method is really interesting and I was pleased last spring when I tried it out myself.

Soil and labels are the next step. I use a mix of 3 parts whatever potting soil I have with about 1 part sharp (sandbox) sand. Labels are cut out of the old vinyl vertical blinds that came with the house. I’ve heard many people like cutting up the slats from mini blinds…. another good idea- but this is what I have 🙂 cheap plant labels Writing out the labels probably takes the most time. Name, notes, date, and source written with a plain old pencil.I fuss a bit over seed depth, but not as much as I should. According to my highly non-technical methods, seeds are just dropped in and covered with chicken grit(crushed granite). Larger rounded seed are planted as deep as 3/4 inch(~2cm), flat, light seed such as lily and fritillaria covered lightly, and anything fluffy (think dandelion seedheads) are barely covered and often still exposed. Once the seed are laid out at their sorta proper depth, grit goes on. Anyone who has ever tried to keep a gravel walk weed-free knows that gravel walks and patios make a perfect seed bed, the grit protects the surface and seeds from splashing around over winter and keeps the seed moist. In fact if I have any really fine seed I’ll just start with a thin layer of grit first and then sprinkle seed on top.And that’s it. I planted the cyclamen seed the same way (deeply) the next day, and although I’ll overwinter them in the cool garage (and hope for some germination), the rest will go outside sometime next week. In a perfect world I would have done this in November and given them a patch of warm weather before they freeze, but this will have to do. We’ll see what shows up next spring 🙂

Thankful for Seeds

Nov30

Being the non-cooking type has its advantages on a day like Thanksgiving. Other family members were busy baking and broiling but I was settled down at the kitchen table going through my seed donations for the HPS (mid Atlantic) seed exchange. It’s my first time ever contributing to this type of seed exchange and the sharing part is great, but better yet is the fact that as a donor I get to add a few extra packets on to this year’s wish list! seed saving

I’m sinking deeper and deeper into seed addiction. Catalogs are nice enough, but for some of the really special things seed exchanges are a great deal, and around here the HPS exchange is a great place to start for hundreds of annuals, perennials, bulbs, shrubs and even trees. An annual membership is $25 and includes meetings and events, but since I live further away I really joined for the seeds. When the exchange opens in January members can choose 25 packets for something like $15 and it’s kind of like Christmas after Christmas. Not to rub it in but I’ll be choosing 35 this year with my donor status….. hopefully what I sent in passes muster and isn’t laughed at!

There are several other great seed exchanges. I’m doing the North American Rock Garden Society’s exchange (as a non-donor) and the basics are the same. Small fee=many cool seeds. The NARGS exchange also does a bonus round where you can pick through the leftovers after the first flush of orders are filled and although many selections may be scarce it’s an even better deal. Just last week I unearthed my haul from last year. NARGS surplus seed All kinds of goodies were re-discovered just in time for fall planting, I think it was something like 20 packets for $7 and I picked out 40. Who can’t use a few more lily seedlings coming along or a couple packets of winter aconite seed? NARGS keeps previous lists online, so if you’re curious to see if it’s something you might be interested in, click here.

There are plenty of other places to feed a seed addiction. Most plant societies run their own exchanges, and in the trenches there are other plant crazy gardeners willing to put in the time, resources, and tedious labor required for collecting and preparing seeds. Amy has a blog over at Primrose Hill Woodlanders and is the magic behind the Primrose Society’s annual seed exchange, and if you’ve never checked out Nan Ondra’s blog Hayefield, you really should. Nan just wrapped up her big seed giveaway, and all told packed and sent out around 1,000 packets of over 100 unique and hard to find varieties to her loyal blog readers. Just thinking about keeping track of who wants what and all the collecting and cleaning makes my head spin, so I’m happy enough to send my dozen seed varieties in as bulk donations and wait for the list to come out!

Have a great weekend…. and before I go, if you haven’t been tempted by seeds you may be tempted by late season bulb clearances. Brent and Becky are having their traditional after Thanksgiving clearance sale. 50% off all remaining stock! My fingers are crossed for a warm spell so I can still plant them in the garden and not pot them all up 🙂

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden