Sunflowers, reborn 4 June 2008

On Sunday (the 1st) I was given some sunflower plants by a gardening acquaintance. Her sunflowers self-seeded and she needed to thin them. She said that four of them were a white-flowering one and the fifth was the  cultivar “Mammoth”. There are two common cultivars with “Mammoth” in the title, “Mammoth Russian” and “Mammoth Grey Stripe”; I will just have to wait and see which one it is.  I already knew they’d have to be dealt with that morning, but when I got the bag home I realized most of them were barerooted - no wonder they’d started drooping! She’d suggested potting them up and keeping them in the shade for a little while, but I wasn’t sure if that was the best plan, since they were used to being in the sun in her garden, and since sunflowers love sun so much that it’s even in their common name.  I planted them and they drooped further, till they were resting their tops on the ground or a nearby plant. They did not appear to actually be dead, but I was really concerned that they wouldn’t make it.  Transplanting sunflowers is already a tricky proposition; I’ve even had mixed success trying it with organically grown farmers’ market ones who were sold in peat pots to lessen the shock of transplant. So two or three times a day, I hand-watered them with a watering can with a sprinkle nozzle attachment and generally checked on their well-being.  I was amazed to notice after a day or two that they had started to grow new leaves.  By yesterday, they had partially uprighted themselves, and the new leaves were getting bigger and more robust. Here are a couple shots of one of the plants:

By last evening, they had further uprighted themselves, and the stems seemed to be gaining strength by the hour.  It really looks like they might make it!

This week in the garden 29 May 2008

The local farmers’ market started yesterday. I always get at least two lavenders there - ‘Lady’ and ‘French Fringed’, which are consistently sold by one of the longest-running organic farms there and not usually hardy here - as well as cooking thyme if it hasn’t survived the winter and some six-packs of annuals. So this week I got both lavenders and the cooking thyme, as well as lemon thyme, an especially pretty geranium (this one has petals with bright pink outer petals and white inner petals, as well as unusual leaves that are much darker in the rest of the leaf than the very outer edges) and six-packs of marigold ‘Safari Red’, marigold ‘Honeycomb’, and generic mixed gazanias, all from one farm I’ve been buying plants from for many years.

I also found out that the farm that’s been selling the best, most robust perennials I’ve ever had the pleasure to grow is leaving the business after sixteen years, and next week will be their final time at our farmers’ market, so I got two perennials from them (at least half their week’s plants had been sold in the first half-hour of the market by fellow panic buyers, so by the time I stopped there, their stock was already limited), monkshood ‘Sparks’ AKA ‘Spark’s Variety’ and delphinium ‘Butterfly Blue’. The farmers told me that unlike other delphiniums, this one prefers full sun and likes hot conditions, so that’s where I planted it when I got home yesterday, and so far it’s doing great even though I haven’t even taken the time to hand-water it and it’s almost eighty F and brilliantly sunny today. According to the farmers, monkshood ‘Sparks’ can easily attain heights of six to eight feet (two-plus meters) and is completely unfazed by strong winds. Today I poked about a bit online and so far, nothing comes even close to that estimate. However, I think it’s the monkshood grown by a local gardening friend and hers easily reaches five feet, often more. I don’t know if New England is a better place to grow it than the climates of what I’ve been reading or what else. I’ll be curious to see what height it gets to in the garden here.

There’s a new farm at the market this year that specializes in herbs, and yesterday they had a stand full of herb plants, but they didn’t have any signs identifying themselves as organic and the staff wasn’t the friendliest yesterday so I didn’t ask them about it, and am not sure yet whether they use pesticides/etc. or whether they are like some of the other farms and just aren’t certified as organic despite using all-organic practices (which means that they’re not allowed to use the term, now that the US government has a certification process for it). There are a few other farms at the market that are the latter, so I know it’s a possibility. Hopefully I’ll get to ask them next week. They had some gorgeous geraniums, but I forced myself to stop at buying the one from the other farm. My geranium fanaticism is getting to be a bit much.

On Tuesday (the 27th) we had severe storms, thunder rattling the buildings with rain coming so fast and thick that the gutters couldn’t hold it all and it rolled off the roof in waves, pouring past my windows as I stood at one watching newly fallen rain blow off other roofs before it even had a chance to roll off. This rain has apparently been most excellent for the garden, as so much more has been happening in it since.

For example, some of the California poppies have finally abruptly budded; here’s one:

The sundial lupine has continued its blooming progression:

A third bud has formed since the rain, too.

The blue-on-blue felicias have gone crazy, tons of their buds opening now.

The salpiglossis have budded:

Shown here with stock (peach bloom in center), euphorbia (upper left), and quicksilver (silvery fuzzy leaves on right).

Some of the new stuff –

Marigold ‘Honeycomb’

It is one of my favorite marigolds.

Marigold ‘Safari Red’

Lemon thyme

Gazania (orange) with pansies and a snapdragon

Most of the gazanias at the farm stand were already blooming. I picked a pack in oranges and yellows to balance out the (still not blooming) ‘Talent Mix’ gazanias I bought at the nursery. In my experience ‘Talent Mix’ tends to bloom primarily in mauve and pale yellow.

Another gazania (two blooms)

The two bronzy-leaved plants and the variegated one are all lantanas. The two are ‘Lavender Trailing’ and the third is a new-to-me (not sure if it’s new-in-general) one, ‘Samantha’. I’ve grown ‘Lavender Trailing’ several times before and it’s the one lantana I try to grow every year. ‘Samantha’ is budded (has been since I planted it) but has not yet bloomed. It’s supposed to bloom in a lemony yellow.

Another gazania

I don’t know if you can see the tiny pollinator on one of the perennial sweet alyssum blooms down below the gazania in this shot. This is the first year I’ve grown perennial sweet alyssum and I’ve been amazed at just how big a hit it is with small pollinators (many of whom also go on to either kill pests or lay eggs that turn into hatchlings that kill pests).

One more gazania

Dianthus ‘Double North’ with lavender foliage and iris foliage

This one’s new at the nursery this year. I got it there recently and planted it yesterday. It’s got a nice fragrance.

The front garden, half in sun and half in shadow:

A morning of work 17 May 2008

Thursday morning (the 15th) I did a bunch of work in the back garden. Amongst other things, I planted a bunch of stuff. I wanted to focus on planted the smallest things and the large currently blooming things first, so that’s what I planted (minus a few of the large plants, as I ran out of time and energy). Below are some pictures I took at the time.

This is one of the back beds after my Thursday plantings in it. In this one, I added the saxifrages (2), the corydalis, a lungwort, one of the woodland phloxes, and two downy yellow violets (the regular species and the smooth variant).

This bed already contained a lot of colchicums (the big leaves at the bottom; while they bloom in autumn, almost all garden-grown species produce their leaves in spring and then go dormant again in early summer), a fern-leaved bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia), a monkshood (the squirrels turn out not to have killed it after all!), an aster, goldenrod ‘Fireworks’ (which likes richer soil than many goldenrods, so is planted in the back unlike the others I have), comfrey, and a patch of Solomon’s seal. My first experience with the native Solomon’s seal was when some birds seeded it under a bramble of raspberries at an old garden (it produces berries in summertime). Since then I’ve figured that if it can successfully compete with raspberry roots, it can successfully compete with just about anything’s roots. So far I’ve been correct. (Click to make this photo larger, as with all photos.)

Here is a photo of the lungwort I planted in the above bed.

It didn’t seem to be doing the greatest there when I checked on it today, so I moved it a little up the slope.

Here is part of the other main back bed (the one I did the most work on last year).

In this one, on Thursday I planted the larger-potted, taller nemesias (3), the twelve remaining larkspur ‘Giant Imperial’ seedlings, primrose ‘Blue Sapphire’, and chervil. I also moved the nemesia ‘Sundrops’ that was doing the worst to a new spot (I think it may have been too late; it hasn’t improved yet - but we’ll see).

Here it is from a different angle.

The brightest plants below are the nemesias (both the older, taller kind and the newer strain ‘Sundrops’).

I got the aforementioned primrose ‘Blue Sapphire’, to plant with primrose ‘Harbinger’ that I planted last year. Here are the two together.

I’ve been working on a post about herbs (it’s not done yet). I bought some herbs this week and here is the chervil I mentioned planting in the back garden; it is near the bronze fennel.

Chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium) is one herb that is for some reason not very well known here in the States. It’s also an herb that prefers quite different growing conditions from many other culinary herbs - a richer, moister soil and a shadier (partial shade is generally best), cooler location help it produce lush growth and keep from going to seed longer. In a hot, sunny site, it will quickly go to seed. It’s best added to dishes shortly before finishing cooking. This is the best page I found of more information on chervil in a fairly short search. In the past I’ve grown chervil from seed, but I find that the competition of tree roots tends to make fewer non-weed seedlings germinate in the back yard than what I am generally used to.

Yes, that’s a dandelion beside the chervil. Perhaps I am one of the few who doesn’t mind dandelions, but that’s all right with me. Their blooms are cheerful and provide nectar, their seeds provide food for birds, their young greens are pretty good to eat, and their roots are medicinal.

Here are some more pictures from the back on Thursday -

The variegated honesty has kept on blooming away

One of the alpine strawberries (Fragaria vesca) is already blooming. Here it is with one of the nemesia ‘Sundrops’.

Leopard’s bane’s (Doronicom orientale) lone bloom with another nemesia ‘Sundrops’

It looks little right now, but it will form a clump over time. In a few years it should be a pretty good size (compared to its current size) and have a bunch of blooms all gracing it at once.

The beautiful native sedum, Sedum ternatum, is blooming away while still waiting to be planted. (The larger version of this shot is really pretty if you like sedums.)

Brunnera ‘Hadspen Cream’ (my favorite brunnera cultivar), blooming its clear blue blooms while waiting to be planted.

Most of the trees in back are maples, but one is an oak (my favorite). It leafed out in the past week.

I’ve read that you’re supposed to plant beans when oaks leaf out, but that is definitely not true this year. The soil is still too cold and they would likely rot before germination could occur.

Here are some of the aforementioned maples.

This is my newer composter that I switched to this spring.

It is the tumbler kind. (The old one was the hand-aerated kind.) Some tumbler kinds are fully enclosed and some are not quite enclosed; this is the latter kind. That kind creates compost tea. The black tray under the composter is to collect it. The white shining thing at the bottom of the photo is a bucket to keep bits of wood and sawdust and such in, as this composter also needs something good at absorbing moisture added to the compost to make it work.

I did a ton more work in the back garden today, but that’ll have to wait for a separate post.

Planting 10 May 2008

Yesterday, in the front garden, I planted the American Alumroot, the Prickly Pear Cactus, the two Small’s Penstemons, and the Sundrops, all mail-ordered from Toadshade. It was sporadically raining when I was planting, and rained a lot more after I finished.  I still had more to plant in front (I planted half of the ten plants from Toadshade that are going in front), but I prioritized the ones that are supposed to bloom sooner (though we’ll see if they actually do, since as I’ve said, many plants react to being planted in the unhospitable site by at first marshaling their energy into getting established), and I’ve got so much to plant in back that it’s ridiculous, but I worry less about the back because plants can survive longer in pots in the cooler, shadier back yard and because it’s less traumatizing to plant them into such a situation when it’s warmer out than to plant into the hot, sun-drenched, wind-tossed front garden during summertime.

Today I went to the nursery and, it being around our average last frost day, stocked up on stuff I’d not yet bought this year, all things that did decent or well for me last year:  Two Tall Verbena (Verbena bonariensis), two creeping purple-flowering verbena (hybrid cultivar “Lapel Blue”), a six-pack of gazania “Talent Mix”, one Angelonia (Angelonia angustifolia), one Hawaiian Blue Eyes (Evolvulus glomeratus), and one Licorice Plant (Helichrysum petiolare).  I also got one plant that is new to my gardening sphere and, as far as I remember (which may be wrong), also new to the nursery, Euphorbia “Diamond Frost”. This afternoon, I planted all of them. I’ve had such amazing germination rates of the seeds I’ve sowed in the front garden that it’s gotten difficult to find spots to plant things!  I usually have to transplant seedlings to be able to fit new plants in.  Well, there could certainly be worse garden problems!

Here’s more on each of today’s purchases:

• Tall Verbena:  I love this airy plant, and bees love it just as much as I do (butterflies have in past gardens, too, and I’m sure they would still if not for that pesky wind).  In Europe it is popular to mass it, either in a clump or in a line that’s a break between two other more robust plants (since it’s so incredibly airy, it’s much easier to see through than most tall plants, making it an ideal visual between-plant break). It’s annual here, but perennial in USDA cold zones 7 and up.  When it’s happy, it will self-seed around the parent plant and perpetuate itself in the garden in following years.
• Creeping verbena hybrid “Lapel Blue”:  This ferny-leaved verbena (much more ferny-leaved than most verbenas) forms more of a mat than most verbenas, and I found it a great softener for the concrete retaining wall.  Planted in front of taller, leggy plants, getting dappled sun most of the day, it did excellently, blooming - in purple, not the cultivar name’s alleged blue - non-stop from spring till the end of summer, at which point I decided it looked slightly straggly and cut it back, which resulted in it not blooming for a month (I don’t think I will do that again this year).  Two or three planted together will form a mat at least eight inches deep by at least a foot and a half wide.  In my experiences so far, most  other verbenas like a richer, moister soil than what the front garden provides, and more sunshine than what the back one provides.
• Gazania “Talent Mix”: This mixed-color gazania has got foliage similar to Dusty Miller (Senecio cineraria), which looks wonderful with the bold coloration of gazanias’ flowers.  I first became enchanted with this mix at the farmers’ market some years ago, but the farm that sold them stopped coming to markets after 2005, so now I have to buy them from the nursery instead. I find them to be worthy of taking the time to seek them out. (This is a gazania mix that can also be grown from seed.)
• Angelonia:  This plant is also known as Summer Snapdragon, because its flowers look similar to snaps’ flowers (and I believe it is a relative) but it has less of a propensity to die in hot and humid weather. (My creeping snapdragons, by the way, lasted all last year, till killed by frost.  It even turns out that one of them seems to have survived the winter [we'll see for sure when the sprout blooms], the only time I’ve ever had a snap survive here.  If you have sucky soil, a generally sucky site, and/or hot and humid summers, perhaps creeping snaps are your way to having summer-long snaps.) I grew some angelonias  last year in the front garden, and found that they did the best being partially shaded by other plants, towards the bottom of the slope so that they got more water than many of their compatriots.  The ones I planted later in the season did much worse than the ones that I planted early on.
• Hawaiian Blue Eyes: Last year was my first attempt at growing this morning glory family member. Its flowers are a bright lightish blue with a distinctive white eye, and its fuzzy foliage is also fairly striking. I first planted it in full sun as the tag recommended, and it did not do well at all.  I replanted it beside the arch of Aster ericoides prostratus “Snow Flurry” and it recovered and went on to prosper, winding in and out amongst other plants, sometimes giving the impression that other plants were blooming a crystal blue as its flowers poked out from beneath them.  It’s another tender perennial that’s generally grown as an annual in cold-winter climes such as mine.
• Licorice Plant: This plant’s commonness in no way diminishes its prettiness, in my opinion. This is a foliage annual, like Dusty Miller or Quicksilver. It has soft silvery-grey leaves and it trails or winds its way here and there. I planted it at the base of the slope in front last year and it thrived by the concrete wall, winding its way rapidly through other plants, twisting and turning this way and that, bringing silver to the bottom of the slope to go with the silvery-leaved fuzzy plants higher up the slope. Yes, generally silver-leaved and fuzzy plants both do better in conditions like the front garden’s than the average plant does, since both silver leaves and fuzz help plants to cope with heat and drought. Besides, silvery fuzzy leaves are just plain fun to touch!  Licorice plant is also a host plant for the Painted Lady butterfly here in North America.  (The also silvery-leaved and groundcover-behaving - but both native and perennial for me - Pussytoes genus [Antennaria] is host to the Painted Lady’s cousin, the American Lady.) Be careful if you are in a much hotter zone than I am; while licorice plant is well-behaved for me, I have read that it can grow to monstrous proportions when planted in the ground in truly hot zones.
• Euphorbia “Diamond Frost”: I have literally not read one bad comment about this plant - an annual here - so far (I looked it up before buying it when I saw my nursery had started carrying it this year), so I am curious to see how it does in my garden.  It’s supposed to bloom non-stop all season and is supposed to laugh at things like drought and heat.  So far it’s an airy cloud of tiny white flowers and little green leaves.  (It definitely does not look like what I personally picture a euphorbia to be, though I know that Euphorbia is a huge genus.)

Books and photos 8 May 2008

The New York Times is 2 for 2 this week: Today they have an interview with Wendy Johnson, a Zen-inspired long-time gardener. Again, the online version includes a slideshow. I’ve already found a used copy of her new book, Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, and I’m thinking of quitting the gardening book I’m currently reading, An Ecology of Enchantment: A Year in a Country Garden by Des Kennedy, to start reading it instead. The latter is a book I recently bought thinking it sounded like the perfect sort of gardening essay book for me to read, but so far I’ve been underwhelmed by it (though in fairness, I’ve only read one section so far; it’s arranged by month, so I thought I would start with May, seeing as we’re in it right now). Even when I agree with the things he’s saying, I find myself feeling cranky about how he says them. For example, we both have a deep love of crabapples, most particularly when they’re blooming, but the way he talks about them annoys me. For another example, he seems to have absolutely zero concern for the possibility of plants escaping, which to be honest is something I would worry about even more in a country garden than I do here in my city one, since the damage can potentially be so much worse close to wild areas. Additionally, I find Des’ writing style to be overly flowery. So maybe Wendy Johnson’s Zen-inspired prose would be a breath of fresh air in comparison.

Speaking of crabapples, this is indeed the week they are blooming here, and they are as lovely as always. Here is one of the many shots I’ve taken of them in the area this week. This one was taken at the Charles River; you can see the river in the background, blurry.

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This is one of my favorite weeks of the year here, when suddenly there seems to be an explosion of bloom: Crabapples and cherries and lilacs and azaleas and rhododendrons and sand cherries and the late magnolias (most of the magnolias now bloom before most of the forsythia here; many forsythia are still blooming now, all leafed out, looking drab - once upon a time they bloomed in late February or early March); tulips and late daffodils and grape hyacinths and columbines and perennial candytuft and vinca and euphorbia species and moss phlox and on and on and on.  This week I saw the Catbirds for the first time this spring and today, a sure sign of summer soon to come, I heard twittering from overhead and looked up to see the Chimney Swifts swooping through the sky for the first time since early last autumn. It always feels here in this cold-winter region like spring starts out as this demure being celebrating subtlety and giving us small jewels as hints of her presence and that this is the week at which she lets down her hair and exclaims, “Let’s have a big party!”

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Somehow I seem to have drawn Sundial Lupine, Lupinus perennis, to me by talking about it here recently. On Monday I stopped in at the nursery as I had to walk by it anyway, and was shocked to discover a sundial lupine for sale there (the first time I’ve ever seen one for sale in a nursery in person), and in one of the biggest pots I’ve ever seen a perennial in there. I asked the nursery manager if she thought they’d be getting more in, and she said she wouldn’t guarantee it, so I bought it and took it around with me for the day. I planted it yesterday (luckily as it was shortly before I was injured). Below are a couple pictures; note how its leaves are thinner and often longer than hybrid lupines, and how they tend to be more upturned, catching the rain more easily than hybrid lupine leaves.

The manager said a lupine this big should definitely bloom this year, but we’ll see.  For more on this kind of lupine, check out this link and (for subspecies occidentalis) this link. Both also have photos.

Stock, blooming away merrily

At least five or six different colors came in just the three pots I got. It’s a great side effect, I think, of buying young plants before they’re blooming much or at all (though I know when one has a specific color scheme in mind, it’s less great). Stock smell so, so lovely, and being planted next to the honey scent of the white sweet alyssum in this year’s garden, it’s like an olfactory explosion in that area.

Nemesia and larkspur 20 April 2008

Much of the front garden, as of yesterday:

If you click to see the larger view, you can get a better idea of the mix of annual flowers/foliage plants, perennial flowers/foliage plants, and herbs that I grow (no veggies in sight yet). Many of the perennials are still quite small right now. I’ve read that yellow is the flower color that most draws the eye and that can be seen from farthest away, and in the larger version of this shot that definitely seems to be true, at least for me; my eyes immediately catch on the yellow pansies and for the violas that are both yellow and purple, to the yellow parts.

Yesterday I planted the comfrey and the seedlings of larkspur and nemesia, all in the back garden. Two of the nemesia plants are larger plants in larger pots, so I prioritized the smaller nemesia. Though I’d been considering keeping the nemesia in pots till after last frost (since they have turned out not to be as frost-hardy as I realized), the seedlings were already rootbound and I had to water them a few times a day just to keep them alive and figured it was worth risking planting them.  They are ‘Sundrops’, the cultivar that has so many of the major gardening writers all aflutter, and their large blooms echo the primrose blooms much more strongly than I would have expected before actually seeing them in the ground, and look lovely planted in the same bed.

The larkspur aren’t blooming yet, but hopefully they will get to it before hot weather kills them, though now that the tree canopy is starting to leaf out (as of the past couple days), it should soon start to be 10-20 degrees F cooler in the back yard than the front one, which will help cool-loving annuals like larkspur survive longer before dying. The larkspur, by the way, is just the standard cultivar, ‘Giant Imperial’.  In my experience, at least in this area, it’s the only one available, even at the farmers’ market. To grow another cultivar, I have to buy seeds and grow it myself.

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Nemesia ‘Sundrops’ (mixed color cultivar)

Primrose ‘Harbinger’

The larkspur seedlings are settling in really really well. They’ve been growing lots in the less than a day since I planted them.

Saxifrage ‘Purple Robe’, waiting to be planted

Corydalis ‘Purple Leaf’, also waiting to be planted

Sundry 19 April 2008

Midmorning Friday

Today is another gorgeous day - sunny with temperatures already in the 50s F and forecast to go higher if the cool sea breeze doesn’t reach these few miles inland. This is the essence of spring to me.

Today I am planning to swing by the nursery again (today the garden section’s manager will be working, and she often has ideas for me; she wasn’t working on my last trip), which will give me a nice walk in the beautiful weather and time spent amongst pretty flowers regardless of whether I buy anything, do fresh cleanup (more leaves have blown into the garden since my last cleanup and there are other odds and ends I need to do) and finish planting. Since I hadn’t grown nemesia in a few years at least (if ever), I did not remember until I’d already bought it that it’s not very frost-hardy. Our average last frost date is the second week of May, so I’ve been going back and forth in my head since getting it about whether to actually plant it or to keep it inside till it’s a bit warmer, like I did last April when W. and I went to the annual herb sale at one of the estates run by the Historical Society and I kept my basil, Cape mallow ‘Elegant Lady’ (that was where I found it, which I thought was a little odd - and that’s why I have no idea where to get a new one this year, since it isn’t hardy and didn’t last the winter), etc. indoors like houseplants till the weather warmed up some more.

Yesterday I went to the hardware store, which always sells seeds and bare roots in spring. I was disappointed to see that they had fewer bare roots than in past years (and the garden store has none this year), concentrating mostly on gladiola and dahlia bulbs. I don’t like modern glads much, preferring the beautiful old ones sold by Old House Gardens, and while I adore dahlias, they did pathetically last year in my back garden, and they generally like rich soil and some moisture so I have made the assumption that they would look even more pathetic in the sunnier front garden. (I may try growing a few dahlias in pots so that I can move them around, though; I have a few tubers saved from last year.) I got a bareroot hosta and a bareroot Siberian iris (’Caesar’s Brother’), two of the few non-bulb/corm/tuber things they were selling this year.

I also got some seeds I hadn’t seen elsewhere, including fenugreek, Sweet Annie (Artemesia annua), and calendula ‘Zeolights’, which is certainly not an old strain of calendula but whose sunset-colored changing-colors orangey-pink blooms (if the illustration on the seed pack is to be believed) should fit well with some of the other annuals I’ve planted. Here is a link to a page on ‘Zeolights’ at the seed company’s website. I grow calendula (I’d already planted seeds of a couple other cultivars) not just because they’re beautiful, not even just because they’re edible and brighten up salads, but also because calendula has great medicinal properties and can be made into salves or simply crushed and rubbed over the skin. Sweet Annie is widely grown by garden-crafters but for me, I just like the look and scent of its lovely foliage, and if I happen to harvest it later on it will just be a nice bonus to me rather than the whole point of growing it. Not surprisingly since it’s an Artemesia, it is not very frost-hardy and while I sowed the calendula and fenugreek yesterday, I’ve reserved its seeds to sow in mid-May. Fenugreek, by contrast, should’ve been planted before now, like the poppies and love-in-a-mist that I belatedly recently sowed.

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Saturday

If I could bottle this string of days, I would do it without hesitation: They are the essence of spring, sunny and dry air and blueblueblue sky - the color of aquamarine in shadow - and temperatures in the 50s to 70 F, daffodils blooming away cheerily. I would save the bottles for midsummer, when the humidity is like a boulder weighing down everything, soot coating the plants and smog choking the air, making it difficult to see a block ahead.

Silly me for thinking I could go to the nursery on a beautiful day without being tempted into buying anything. Yesterday, after consulting with the nursery manager, I ended up getting two euphorbias. two saxifrages, and another plant (whose name I’m currently forgetting) on her recommendation, as well as two seedling packs of sweet alyssum (they’d added it since my last visit), Corydalis ‘Purple Leaf’, borage, and comfrey. Borage and comfrey are both considered herbs by the nursery and thus are cheaper than they would otherwise be. (To better explain what I mean, lavenders are considered perennials instead of herbs at the nursery so they are sold at perennial prices rather than herb prices and placed with the other perennials instead of with the shelves of herbs.)

Last year I grew borage from seed and it did surprisingly well in the crappy conditions of the front garden, and though it definitely did not ever attain the heights it did in my old garden with its richer soil and shelter from the wind, it bloomed nearly nonstop from midsummer till killed by frost, and attracted bees and other pollinators galore. Since it was near my bean plants, that was an especially happy thing. This year I decided to just go ahead and get a plant that was already doing pretty well. It’s got three rosettes; I think mine only had one last year.

Anyway, comfrey is a plant I love so much I can’t even begin to tell you. I grew a large species - not the standard herb - in my old garden in a humus-rich, moist to boggy soil with partial sun and it grew to tremendous heights, some of the leaves two to three feet long and the bloom stalks reaching for the sky. In addition to comfrey being a medicinal herb, it is said to improve the soil around it and its leaves are said to speed up the process of compost-making. Plus, being a member of the borage family (it often started to bloom in my old garden as the strikingly similar blooms of its cousins, Virginia bluebells and lungwort, were fading), it’s a bee favorite. Grow comfrey!

I don’t know why I’ve never grown euphorbia till this year. It’ll be an interesting experiment. Yesterday I planted the two euphorbias - an upright one with leaves in varying shades of blackish-purple and deep red, that according to its tag blooms in late spring and early summer - and one that is far more common, at least here, the floppy one with obviously succulent blue-green leaves that has chartreuse flowers in spring and is, in fact, blooming right now. I also planted the sweet alyssum, the borage, and the little alpine-ish plant whose name I just can’t recall at present, a dainty relative of the cranesbills/hardy geraniums.

I do know why I’ve never grown saxifrage, though.  For some reason they intimidate me.  They are tiny plants with tiny mounding succulent leaves and though that would make you - or at least me - think that they prefer sunny, dry conditions, they seem to be fussier than all that. So I got instructions to plant them on the slope in the back garden, with partial shade, particularly during midday. Apparently they have a tendency to go dormant when it gets too hot and sunny, so partial shade should help with that. We’ll see how they do. For now they are lovely charming mounds of various shades of green, one of them with heaps of ruby red buds sticking up on bloom stalks that are taller than the mound of leaves. If they adjust well (I’m planning to plant them today) within the next few weeks, I might buy a couple more in time for them to bloom (all the ones at the nursery bloom in spring; it’s just exactly when that varies). I try to do the majority of my hard-labor gardening in spring and autumn; it’s better for both the plants and me.

I’ve been writing this post for over a day.  It’s time to post it and perhaps I will write more later.

A handful of photos 12 April 2008

Hen and chicks ‘Grey Dawn’

This is why courtrooms should never rely on eyewitness testimony! As you can see, this hen and chicks doesn’t look exactly like what I described in my last post. In reality the edges are what’s a greyish hue, and with mauveish tips, and the center of the rosettes is entirely mauve. It’s lovely. At the bottom corner of the photo you can see the tiny thyme I mentioned in my last post. (At the top is the perennial candytuft.)

Hyssop ‘Blue Fortune’

Cinquefoil ‘Miss Wilmott’ and chives

The chives are a survivor from last year that I forgot to mention in my last post. I especially like how their strong growth (the strongest so far of anything planted in front last year) and shape echoes the shape of the autumn-blooming crocus’ leaves. Perhaps in this photo you can also see why some species of cinquefoil are called “barren strawberry”.

Oriental poppy rosettes (center and front) with sprouting sea lavender (in back - the latter’s new red leaves are sprouting amongst its leftover dead leaves from last year)

I would guess that the poppies that survived are ‘Princess Victoria Louise’ and the one I got at the farmers’ market last year, which was supposed to be ‘Brilliant’ (a common red cultivar) but turned out to be an unknown cultivar flowering in a bright orange color, as those were the two strongest growers last year, but I’m not positive yet. I did not realize until after planting two of them that sea lavenders are apparently uncommon in nurseries due to resenting transplant - like many of my other front garden flowers, they have a long taproot. If your conditions are similar to mine and you can’t find plants, look for seeds; the same source said they should be easy enough to grow from seed.

Since my last post, we got our first thunderstorm of the season. Here it is in progress:

Since then, we’ve had a second one. I wonder how many of the seeds I sowed in the past couple days have simply washed away. Such is gardening. Such is nature.

Happenings in the garden so far this spring 12 April 2008

Thursday was our nicest day yet this calendar year, sunny and windy with a high around 70 F. I cleaned up the front garden and planted sixty young pansies/violas, two parsleys (a flat-leaved Italian variety), and a handful of perennials.

I’ve never grown hen and chicks before, hesitant partially because I heard a story from another local gardener that her rare prize variety of them was dug up and removed from her sidewalk-side garden by some unscrupulous succulent lover, but this week’s Q&A gardening column in The New York Times favorably mentioned them as being excellent for edging in hot, poor, low-rain conditions, so it inspired me to try them for the first time, and happily, they turned out to be one of the small number of perennials already in stock at the closest nursery. To my surprise, there were several cultivars already in stock to choose from. After weighing them all for some time, I ended up picking “Grey Dawn,” which does not appear to yet have any photos on the web - it is predominantly a mauveish color, with edging in a greyish hue. I ended up planting it next to the tiny-leaved thyme, which for some reason greatly pleased me - the tiny thyme’s tiny rosettes somehow pleasantly echo the large, bold rosettes of the hen and chicks.

In addition, I also planted a rock cress that is blooming in magenta, a perennial sweet alyssum that blooms in yellow-gold if the tag is correct, a perennial candytuft that is already blooming in white, hyssop “Blue Fortune”, and cinquefoil/potentilla “Miss Wilmott”. Other seaside plants, such as sea lavender, have done well in the front garden - I assume the combination of wind and poor soil and sloping is similar to what they’re used to - so I am hoping that rock cress will do the same. Annual sweet alyssum was one of the front garden’s stars last year, blooming nearly nonstop from spring till killed by an ice storm in late autumn, so I’m hoping that its perennial cousin will be as happy. I grew the species herb, anise hyssop, last year, and after a bit of a straggly start, it adjusted to its conditions and then bloomed for a few months, attracting bees and wasps galore (I once witnessed two American bumblebees getting into an altercation over the most nectar-rich bloom!), so I’m hoping “Blue Fortune” will do the same, and that perhaps being planted while the weather is still cool will aid in its adjustment. As to the cinquefoil, I’m hoping that it lives up to their reputation of plants that do well in dryland conditions.

The pansies and violas are planted in three main clumps according to color. One clump’s theme is maroon, very very dark purple, red, and deep royal purple; this has two pansies and two violas (six of each). The second clump’s theme is a lighter royal purple and sunny lemony yellow; this has two pansies and one viola (six of each). The third clump’s theme is much lighter than the other two, more of a washed look, and uses mostly “Morpho” pansies, the type that fade over time to a lighter version of the fresh bloom’s look. This last clump is in paler blues, mauves, yellows, and oranges. There are three pansies in this one (and no violas), again six of each type.

The parsley-growing in front is an experiment. Parsley is supposed to need richer soil than the front to get a good harvest. I’m going to see if that’s true and exactly what “they” mean by “good harvest” - whether a harvest in poor soil is still adequate enough for one person, even if it’s not a good harvest by whomever’s standards.

The time in the front garden gave me more time to assess what definitely survived the winter and the wrecking of the bed by some workmen. These are things that I am now sure survived:

• The autumn-blooming crocuses (they leaf out in spring)
• Most or all of the asters (various species)
• At least one of the two creeping bellflowers (two species)
• At least two of the hardy mums
• The catmint
• The Carolina lupine aka false lupine
• The snow-in-summer
• Most or all of the bearded iris, though at least one of them seems to be sick
• The Siberian iris
• At least one of the sedums
• One of the two yarrow “Moonshine” (and since Thursday the second one has sprouted too)
• The two sea lavenders
• One of the lavenders
• At least two of the Oriental poppies
• One of the two sages, despite being utterly trampled (to near annihilation) by workmen over the winter

There are also some things sprouting that I haven’t identified yet. There are also some things that have shown no signs of life yet that I’m surprised about, like the goldenrods.

Yesterday (Friday) rain was predicted, but in the morning it was still sunny and pretty. Last year I bought a box and some file cards from the stationer’s store and used it to store unused seed packs, and yesterday I sorted through them and picked out things that should be planted now or should have already been planted, and then sowed many of them in the front garden, hoping the coming rain would gently help them to germinate more quickly than they otherwise might. I sowed annual poppies, annual sweet alyssum, annual scabiosa/pincushion flower, love-in-a-mist, calendula, dill ‘Dukat’, more parsley, chamomile, sweet peas (in mixed colors), garden peas, and fava beans/broad beans. Now that global warming has made our winters and summers longer and our autumns and springs shorter, I find it more difficult to know exactly when to sow the seeds of things that like it cool but not too cold, like sweet peas and peas - if you plant them in soil that’s too cold, the seeds might rot or the seedlings might die of damping off, but if you wait too long to plant them, the heat can abruptly kill the plants before you ever get blooms/pea pods. So far my strategy has been to plant some and reserve some of the seeds - hedging my bets. Regardless, for peas I planted the cultivars “Oregon Sugar” and one I’m currently forgetting, and for fava/broad beans I planted the cultivars “D’Aquadulce a Tres Longue Cosse” and “Windsor Long Pod”.

Then today I sowed hollyhocks (so far none of the previously planted hollyhocks have shown evidence of survival), larkspur, and Johnny jump up (the wild viola of Europe), as well as a pack of sweet peas (also mixed colors) that I forgot to sow yesterday. My natural tendency is to coddle hollyhocks - I suppose the most common kind, Alcea rosea, being so prone to rust in my climate makes me think of them as plants in need of babying - but this is not the way to get great hollyhocks. The best way to get stellar ones is to plant them in as harsh conditions as possible - I see the biggest, best stands of them growing in thin strips of poor soil beside large parking lots here - and expect them to grow fast and emphatically and die young. Just think of them as the James Dean of cottage garden flowers.

I sowed half the larkspur and two-thirds of the Johnny jump up in back, which allowed me to take better stock of what survived in the back garden. Almost everything has, including:

• The alpine strawberries
• The columbines (various cultivars as well as the species that’s native to this region)
• Most or all of the foxgloves
• The bronze fennel (!)
• The woodland aster
• The bergenias
• At least one of the two epimediums
• The honesty plant
• At least one of the two partridgeberries
• The fringed bleeding heart
• All the colchicums (like the autumn-blooming crocus in front, they bloom in autumn but leaf out in spring)
• The Allegheny spurge
• The two woodland phloxes
• The perennial larkspur
• The leopard’s bane
• Two primroses
• More I’m currently forgetting

About the only thing, in fact, that definitely does not seem to have survived in back is the monkshood, which unfortunately does not surprise me, as the back garden plays regular host to two sweet but rather stupid squirrels, who destroyed and attempted to eat it last autumn (monkshood didn’t get its alternate common name “wolfsbane” by chance; it is extremely poisonous). At the time, it looked like the monkshood had been dealt a deathblow, and I won’t be surprised if it does not reappear.