Tulip Time!

May9

There must be some Dutch in me because I’m a little wacky about tulips. Not real bad, I don’t collect every kind and have them all over the place (my criteria for plant wackiness), but I’m always adding a few new ones…. and then I feel some kind of urge to tend them and multiply them and replant them. It should end once this relatively new garden starts to fill up, but for now I can indulge that inner Dutch.

The rain and cold kept them shut for a while, but even then they looked nice (these are pictures from early last week). Four years ago I bought this blend on clearance as a generic “darwin mix”… it was nearly all orange, so I threw in a couple pinks just beacause I had them.

The “sweatheart” tulips were new this year, don’t know why I bought a lemon meringue colored tulip when I have so many daffodils in similar colors…..

Also new was the “Princely mix” from Van Engelen. Not sure what’s in it, but again…. on clearance… can’t beat this color for around$15. Plus I spread the other half of the box around the rest of the beds :)The random white peeling post is our attractive front light. The less you see of that the better.

“Pink Impression” (also new) is always a winner. I’ve bought it before but have gotten other, similar tulips instead. This looks to be the real thing and the flowers are huge!

Tulips will last much longer in cool weather, but when a warm sunny day finally hits (like we had last week) the flowers open wide and you know it’s finally full, head-on spring.

I just go around on days like this and get nothing done. It’s too tempting to just sit around, enjoy the sun and admire the season. Since the vegetable garden is the easiest place to plant out your excess tulips, that’s where most end up. I’ll regret this in a couple of weeks as I’m scratching my head looking for a spot to stick a tomato.

I don’t really cut too many for the house, most of the picking is done by the kids. A couple end up at grandma’s, some get planted in the mulch, many get pulled apart and thrown, and random neighbors often get deliveries in exchange for an ice pop or cookie.

Daddy sometimes gets a flower, but much of his time is spent protecting the double tulips, since they seem to be particularly attractive to flower collectors. The doubles have started to grow on me though. Ever since I bought this mix of early doubles called “magic carpet”, I’m finding an excuse to keep them around (even though the singles are still so much more graceful). To me the doubles look like huge fluffy wads of tissue paper…. but wow! that’s some fluff!

My favorites might be the ones just coming into bloom now. The late tulips seem to have the most subtle blends and nicest forms. If you ignore the color clashes in this planting and just look at the color and almost lily shape of these fruity colored “Temple of Beauty” tulips, I think you might like them a little too, even with the crappy camera focus.

Tulip season is a little past peak now with the earliest ones already going by. The pickers are still keeping busy and I’ll be busy too when I need to dig them all up out of the veggie garden. That’s a job for June though, May is for enjoying flowers.

Seedling Update

Apr27

I’m not as far behind as I thought I was. Even though not a single garden center would ever worry about me as competition, there are a few things looking like they might be ready to go in the ground. Two weeks earlier and a week or two in the cold frame (which doesn’t exist) would have been perfect… but this is where I’m at… and chances are next year this is also where I’ll be at. I’m a slow learner.

This was supposed to be the warm season light, with tomatoes and peppers and such, but I think it’s still not warm enough. The empty pots are things that just didn’t want to germinate, and the ones that did did it ever so sloooooowly. I think I need a heat mat to speed them up, it sounds like a good idea but I’ve never committed to getting one. Anyone have good luck with them?

The tomatoes and peppers look fine, but the coleus cuttings seem to do much better on the windowsill. Coleus are the one plant that appears to find something lacking in the flourescent lights. They always seem to have a “funny” look to them until they go outside and I wonder what it is.

The cool weather plants under the lights in the back of the garage look a little more impressive.

I think once this stuff hits the great outdoors it will take off…. assuming the bunnies stay away. I’m trying out “bright lights” swiss chard and already like the multicolored stems.

So we’ll see where this goes. Right now the vegetable garden is full of spring bulbs. It seemed like a good idea in October, now I don’t know. But at least it looks nice.

A few good hellebores

Apr24

In the last 4-5 years I’ve noticed that hellebores have entered the tissue culture world. It was just a matter of time I guess, but I feel like it takes away a little bit of the magic and mystery of these plants….. but on the other hand there’s no way I would have ever gotten my hands on some of the newer complicated (usually sterile) cross-species cultivars that are showing up.

This “HGC Silvermoon” is a heavy bloomer with an interesting color. It’s attractively planted too close to a construction area and the bricks are supposed to remind me not to step on it. Too bad the leaves get beat up by the ice and snow, I’ve seen it in bloom with foliage intact and it looks so much better. But you get what you get when you’re too lazy to offer up any winter protection.

“Cinnamon Snow” is from a similar cross involving 2 different species. I could google the info and come off as sounding pretty smart but it’s late and I don’t think I’d be fooling anyone. I believe one of the parents is H. Niger, commonly known as the Christmas Rose, and I think this is the first time I’ve got a nice bloom on this plant. It’s in a sheltered spot so the leaves hold up well, but the sheltered spot also brings the blooms up early so they tend to freeze, abort and not open fully

Hybrid hellebores

The “other” hellebores are the regular hybrid hellebores. They’re a mix of several species, they set seed easily and run a range of colors from white to mauve to purple to nearly black. There are some greens and yellows now and with spotting and doubles the range keeps getting bigger. Nearly all of my plants are from seed, but tissue culture clones are showing up here too. These here are all from Australian Elizabethtown seed (now sadly closed).

I’m still waiting for the fancier ones to grow up and bloom, but I do have a couple anemone flowered (a flower part-way between single and double) starting to put on a decent show…. I hate when any part of my hand shows up in a picture, but hellebores tend to nod and sometimes you need a helping hand to peek inside.

Since many hellebores are seed grown there’s always the chance your plant will be a dud when it blooms, and it’s not a bad idea to avoid buying them sight unseen, but if you go with a decent source your chances for a good ‘un are much better. I would bet that most people in the anti-hellebore camp (if one exists) have only seen poor quality seed grown plants. Get good seed and be patient, things will work out.

Next year should be a good hellebore year. I have way too many seedlings coming along and have actually been taking pretty good care of them. I’m hoping for doubles, yellows, picotees…. all the fancy new types that I don’t have yet. The nursery plants are usually out of my budget, but give me a packet of seeds and a couple years and I’m right there with a decent hellebore bed.

Daffodil season is here!

Apr23

I like daffodils. The color range isn’t nearly as wide as tulips, they sometimes nod a little too much, but they’re still a sure sign of spring. In another couple days daffodil and tulip season will be in full swing here (assuming it ever warms up) and if the wind would only die down a bit maybe I could get some decent pictures.

“Golden Echo” is a real nice shorter one, it grows, blooms and multiplies well but I wouldn’t mind if the blooms stood up a little higher. Still a current favorite.

The yellow in front is “St Patrick’s Day”, a little bit of a nod-er, but a strong plant in the garden. “Barret Browning” is behind, it’s an oldie, but how can I complain about a reliable, good doer that holds it’s blooms up above the foliage and faces out nicely?

“Ice King” on the other hand, is a mess this year. The up and down, cooler temperatures have put alot of greenish color into the blooms, and the wind and heavy rains have thrown the top heavy blooms all over the place. I meant to remove this one last summer but forgot exactly where it was, so only dug up maybe a half dozen bulbs.

The big brother to “Ice King” is “Ice Follies”, the two are nearly the same plant just one has a mutation which resulted in a doubled center (called a sport). Among serious daffodil nuts (those infected with the “yellow fever”) “Ice Follies” is looked down on as the cockaroach of the narcissus world. It’s nearly unkillable and a perfect daffodil for beginners. I have to laugh at this section of my daffodil bed where a nuclear bomb or something has nearly killed off the other narcissus while “Ice Follies” just gets fatter.

I promised a picture of my plain old corydalis solida in bloom, so here it is. Kind of washed out, but it does have its good qualities. Note the attractive Taraxacum coming into bloom on the right. Latin sounds alot fancier than just calling it a dandelion. Also the grassy sprouts with the brown seeds still attached are scilla siberica seedlings. I might be just a couple years away from a new weed problem here.

I’m hoping for better daff pictures this week. I have a few more in the back and I hate to leave you with the impression that all I grow is”Ice Follies”!

Project finale

Apr18

There was no more delaying, and I finally got the apple tree in the ground. I had to since Sunday it went into the bucket to re-hydrate, and Monday it needed to be planted. Plus I had practically all day to get it done since Monday I stayed home for a dr’s appointment. Still I wasted most of the morning, spent three hours waiting for my appointment, and only got into tree planting somewhere around 5pm. Good thing the weather stayed nice.

That’s the tree there with the little bit of yellow tape near the base. I mulched it with a bucket of compost and then topped that with chopped leaves from the early spring bed cleanups. I think it will do well here and it’s already made a big impression for this little corner of the yard. The apple twig has me calling this “the orchard” now instead of “the meadow”. This is the back part of the yard where I don’t mow until about late July or so in order for all the weedy little flowers to get a chance to bloom. The kids enjoy it but not everyone here thinks as highly of the meadow as I do. The annual mowing usually takes place right after some big argument over snakes and ticks and spiders.

The last thing done to finish up the tree planting was to cut down two small aspen trees. I let weed trees (sumac and aspen) sprout up in the meadow and then “edit” them out when I get tired of them. They’re a nice screen along the ugly chain link fence while young, but I have no plans to leave any. A quick zip through the roots with my handy reciprocating saw and they’re gone. I guess I could have reached for the fancy pruning saw, but (1) this one’s a power tool and (2) for the cost of the $3 blade I shamelessly cut through dirt, rocks, and roots and don’t care what I do to the blade. Come to think of it, lots of pruning gets done with this saw. I even use it to cut wedge divisions out of ornamental grass clumps. Sure beats digging.

The pond is in and getting its leak test.

It still looks mighty ugly but hopefully I can blend it in somehow. I think the shape is called natural, but there’s nothing natural about the way it sits all plastic and stiff in the hole. But the birds don’t care, I barely walked 15 feet to get a rake and the birds were sneaking in for a bath. Looks like it’s going to be popular. It’s already popular with the kids, but all they seem to want to do is throw things in. Rocks, dirt, and tools are all fair game.

Also there’s been a death. My daughter informed me that “Matthew” is dead at the bottom of the pool. Don’t ask me how an earthworm climbed the walls and got in there, but one did.

Do you like the little yellow clump of primroses blooming in the shovel danger zone? I hope they survive since I have a bad record with these. This is an older heirloom type given to me by a friend and promises to be a little tougher.

My current favorite daffodil (Pistachio) is open and just about every other daffodil is just waiting for some sun ….. also the kid’s pea plantings are starting to sprout.

Good thing I finally got the apple tree into the ground. As I came up to the front door to call it a day I found the second part of my mailorder shipment. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to order 7 lilac bushes, a nice assortment of different colors and sizes. Whatever I was thinking last month, looks like I have a new project this month. Plus mulch. Plus did I mention I ordered dahlia roots too?

How not to do a project, part deux

Apr15

Sunday rolls around and I’m not even sure what the weekend project is…. or was. I think it had something to do with that box of bareroot apple tree that’s been sitting on the porch for two days now. Bareroot plantings should be taken care of asap, first step is to plump up the roots again by sitting them in a bucket overnight, I think 24 hours is sorta the max for soaking, you don’t want to drown them. When planting, the only special thing to remember is to spread out the roots and work the soil back in between. A little dirt, water it in, a little more dirt, water in. It’s better to keep the root flare high rather than deep, you can always add soil or mulch around the base later if needed. Don’t bother mixing anything into the planting hole, if your soil is horrible, plant even higher and mulch well with compost and those nutrients will work their way down to the roots, just like they do in every forest on the planet. You may think it’s cruel not to try and improve the soil for your baby, but look around. If you can see other trees growing then your tree should be fine too…. unless those other trees are swamp cypress… you might have a drainage issue then.

So with a sense of urgency to get my tree (and 3 gooseberries too!) into the ground I got the coffe brewed and sat down at the computer….. breakfast followed and then some Lego villages had to be built. Then a friend stopped by. Six hours later, a run to the local nursery (to drop off $40), and this is where I’m at. It’s pansy season after all and buying pansies, shaking off winter, and supporting my local nursery are tradition in these parts. The apple tree is still not planted but it’s Sunday after all, and things shouldn’t happen too fast on a day of rest.

It’s more fun to plant pansies than dig holes for dormant apple trees, and you shouldn’t pick-axe pond holes on a day of rest, so I drug out the planters for my new purchases and got them planted. Again it’s not that easy. All the fancy pots already have stuff in them. It’s stuff like rubber trees and fig bushes that need repotting too, so that all came out to make room for the pansies. Did I mention I bought lettuce? I was embarrased to even think of my own seedlings when I saw the lettuce plants for sale. My reasoning was if I can get at least 215 servings of salad off these plants, they should pay for themselves.

The back deck got a little spring too. I should have powerwashed off last year’s stains first, but that’s another project and right now I’m too busy planting trees.

Tomorrow maybe I can actually get one in the ground. The rest of Sunday was spent taking the kids (my two plus another three) for a walk in the woods and down to the railroad tracks. They then insisted on seeing the drug house that burned down on Saturday. Funny how these things never get mentioned in most tree planting tutorials.

Around 9pm I snuck out and opened the tree box. Everything is soaking and has to be planted Monday before it drowns. I should have no problem getting to it since the only other thing going on is repairing the pond hole.

Regarding the pond hole, I made the mistake of leaving the shovels out next to the dirt piles, and after two hours of worm hunts, “climbing the pile”, and playing with the pick-axe, most of the dirt is back in the hole or thrown into the pond liner. A little more work for me, but at least most of the local earthworms (and a couple of grubs) have been given names.

How not to do a project

Apr15

Garden projects are usually pretty straight forward, you got dirt and you got stuff that goes either in or on it. Sometimes it gets elaborate with fancy structures, but for the most part we’re all just farmers scratching out a hole and putting in a seed. This weekend was good weather for that with temperatures perfectly positioned between numb finger lows and dripping sweat highs….. good work weather, and the plan was to order mulch, top a couple beds off, and make my suburban beds sparkle with neatness and weed-free goodness. Except the mulch wouldn’t be in until next Wednesday. Normally that would have wrecked the weekend project,but trust me there’s always a backup, and this one came in the form of a long narrow box which greeted me at the door Friday afternoon, a box containing my NEW!”liberty” apple! and three bareroot gooseberry bushes. New project: plant fruit garden.

I should have prepped things Friday but it was rainy and cold. Plus I was tired, crabby, lazy…. you name it….. better to get a good night’s rest and then tackle these things in the morning. So first thing Saturday I got right to it. First I wasted about an hour on the computer (always necessary). Then those little guys that live here woke up and it was coloring and cutting, then I was required to admire about 10 thousand crayon butterflies and angry birds, then the little people started crying for breakfast. One wanted bacon, one wanted french toast., one wanted to help crack the eggs, one insisted on buttering all the toast… then of course the fifth wave of cleanup… thousands of little bits of cut paper, but I did have to congratulate myself this time for not suggesting the paints.

Planting fruit trees always sounds easier in the books, and they never mention the crayon part. It was about midafternoon before I finally got around to taking a look at the box… but there was still something haunting me. Shovel in hand I stared at the stupid pre-formed pond that I dragged out of the woods last year. It was basically a project that never worked out for my brother in law and somewhere along the line I became convinced it would work out better for me. Early photo records go back to June of last year when I first began mowing around it. Generally speaking I hate pre-formed ponds. I have no idea why I need to put it to use, especially since I have a brand new liner that’s been sitting in the garage just waiting for the last decade for a hole to line. Why do I have to use this ugly, leaky piece of tossed-aside trash? I don’t know, but I digress…. we’re planting trees here.

So I grabbed the shovel again and started digging the hole for the pond.

The first couple inches were no problem. It’s the clay-ish topsoil that was spread when the house was built 40-ish years ago. The gravelly, shale filled, hard pack underneath is always where my digging ends. Rather than pick-axe my way through and finish the job, I took a break and proceeded to patch up the cracks that had formed in three of the liner corners. Turns out that an upside down pond insert sitting around in your yard for nearly a year is a magnet for small children to climb on and jump upon. Jumping on them cracks the liner. So long story short I patched the corners and started with the pick axe again, only this time with mittens because all my fingers were glued together during the patching process.

There’s a plastic chair next to the project site. Any good project needs “thinking time” to sit back and review your progress, and I had already spent a lot of the afternoon in this position. Things probably would have gone much better if there was more progress to review, but pick-axing holes sucks. Plus for the past two years I’ve celebrated each spring with a nice hospital stay due to A-fib relapses, so maybe this would be a good time to call it a day. Off to the recliner I went for more “thinking time” and to regroup for Sunday. The tree is still in the box, but at least there were no 16 year old sons here, slipping feet off brakes and running F-250 pickup trucks into garage corners. Spending a Sunday tree planting is much less work than the fun my neighbor will have putting the corner of his house back onto it’s foundation.

Hyacinths have arrived

Apr12

It’s not hard to find hyacinth bulbs in the fall. They’re one of the “big four” (a term I just made up) that describes them and the tulips, daffodils and crocus that show up every fall in garden centers around the country. They’re easy, fragrant, come back reliably and run the whole range of colors with the exception of green and true red. What’s not to like? There must be something, because even though they’re good enough to buy forced to celebrate Easter and other springtime celebrations, they’re not always the first choice for planting.
I say go ahead and plant them this next fall. I think you’ll like them.

A couple warm days have brought all the hyacinths into bloom. They’re remarkably color coordinated considering I originally planted just $7 worth of no name clearance bulbs from SAMs club. This would be year 5 for them and I think over that time they’ve actually gotten bigger each season, especially the pinks and whites. Some push up two stalks of fat blooms, and if there’s one fault to these flowers this might be it. Sometimes the blooms are so heavy they flop.

A newer “retro” hyacinth that avoids the flopping problems are the multiflowering types. Each bulb can push up a less dense, often multiple, flower stalk. I say they’re a retro version because people commonly compare them to the old roman hyacinths, which were an older (less hardy) version with a similar, wilder look. I’ve got “Blue Festival”, which doesn’t make much of an impression in the garden, but even so I’d like to add the pink and white versions too. Close up the blue looks great. I need to get mulch down around these bulbs. Maybe it will be the weekend project, but with daffdil season starting any day now who knows?

Spring is Official

Apr10

Two warm days and spring has exploded into full force. The trees don’t have leaves yet but 70°F brings up all the bulbs, opens the hyacinths, and starts the daffodils. It also brings out the neighbors. I saw more people around the block yesterday than I had in all the last three months combined, and everyone was out raking, fertilizing, aerating, blowing….. all the good things that responsible subdivision inhabitants fill their sunny days with. In the front bed we have our first dose of flower sunshine, good old “tete a tete” daffodil. It’s the Stella D’Oro of daffodils and gives nice early color.

I have to confess I broke the camera last weekend. It’s a Nikon D3000 with a Nikkor 18-55mm 3.5-5.6GII lens……. I have no idea what any of that means but I’m sure it has something to do with expensive and something to do with even more expensive to fix. The camera met the floor and the plastic tabs that hold the lens snapped off. Apparently it’s a common break and after several hours of moping and cursing (silently of course, away from the kids) I went online and found the fix. It was a generic lens bayonet piece which I ordered as well as the tiny screwdrivers needed to replace it. Two days ago I replaced it and am now back in business. There was one more final blip in the road, it was the crappy, non-functional, cheap (more cursing) screwdrivers. I gave them to the boy, who has a talent for disposing of small tools, and then made a trip to Home Depot and got a Husky set (for less money btw). The camera came back on line just in time. Here’s a picture of the front border with blue scilla siberica and the reds of corydalis solida. Corydalis might just be one of my new favorite spring bulbs.

I’m not 100% sure if they really are true to their names, but I bought the darker red corydalis as “George Baker” and the lighter, almost pink as “Beth Evans” (both from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs). Most of the time I can’t tell the difference between the two, but I don’t entirely care. Both are nice and I need more. There are whites, purples, pale pinks…… but they’re hard to find and not exactly cheap. Maybe I’ll treat myself this fall to two or three affordable ones….. I just won’t buy any more new work ties for a year or two.

Not blooming yet are some I bought as the generic corydalis solida, it’s a murky mauve color, shorter, wimpier looking, and I’m not crazy about it. I’ll bore you with a picture of it when the blooms open.

The blue of the scilla siberica and the violet stars of the chiondoxa are nice enough too, but if you look closely you’ll see a bunch of seedlings coming up. I’m not sure I want that many and wonder if they’re going to be a pest some day. But on the other hand a weed with a bright blue or violet color might not be the worst problem to have, so for now they are welcome reseeders.

The hellebores have come up too, these survived spending the winter buried in kids toys and trash and are now looking all dark and moody.

They look better in the picture than in the garden, the colors are too dark to show up well, but the dark one is cool. Originally these were bought as “sunshine strain” from Barry Glick’s nursery maybe 5 years ago. I expected a nicer range and bigger blooms but I guess you get what you get…. also the plants were kind of tiny when I got them…. I should probably stop there.

Here’s a lighter one, an “Ashwood strain” from Santa Rosa Gardens. I like it.

That’s enough for now. Daffodils are coming up and I need to save my energy for that.

Feelin’ Rich

Apr8

I’ve been on a buying spree lately. After months of doubtful back and forth it looks like my job will be around for another year, so I’ve finally cracked open the wallet to treat myself to a few extras on my wish list. The first was last weeks’ $100 trip to Lowes. A new 4 light T8 shop light with timer, light bulbs, and a bag of potting soil all got a spot in the cart. I eyed the seed potatoes for a while (they had a nice selection, reasonably priced) but didn’t bite. After years of sitting on my wallet it’s hard to go all out.

I’ve got the lights set up in a corner of the basement close to the furnace, so I’m hoping this will be a good spot for the warm growers like tomatoes and peppers. Of course space under the new the light is already filled up with nonsense like coleus cuttings and geraniums, but I did fit a bunch of new seedling pots in. Hopefully by the time I need more space a few of the cool weather things can already go outside.

It’s a crappy picture but it shows about all you want to see of the spindly coleus cuttings that have spent all winter on the windowsill. I should have potted them up earlier but….. you know…. hopefully they will grow fast enough to give me a few additional cuttings as I pinch them back.

Nothing fancy about the light set up. It’s a basic T8 shop light with generic 5000K “sunlight” light bulbs rated for laundry rooms and closets. I may be feeling rich but I’m not going crazy with special (aka expensive) growlights, and based on the success of the first light setup this one should be fine.

My credit card got a little more excersise over the next couple days. Not much, but I’ll wait a few days before fessing up to my other purchases.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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