The garden & I are both still here! 1 December 2009

I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long.  Believe it or not, despite the fact that it’s 1st December, the garden is still growing.  We had a fairly cool October but November was mild, especially at night.  The tender potted plants were moved inside during a frost warning in October anyway, and have been growing on indoors since then.  But the tender plants outside are mostly still going – it’s the most sensitive, like the coleus plants and the Hawaiian blue eyes, that have died (which once again reminded me of why I don’t trust that book Bulbs in the Basement Geraniums on the Windowsill, even though it was recently recommended at a local garden club meeting – the temperature still hasn’t fallen to the level that the book claims kills Hawaiian blue eyes as of my typing this, and yet it was one of the first sensitive plants to die, at least a few weeks ago now).  One of the African blue basils was even still going as of yesterday, but I forgot to check it today, after last night was the coldest night yet this season, cold enough that some puddles iced over and the old-school elderly Italian gardener a few blocks away finally had someone carry in her huge, heavy pots of zonal geraniums, tropical vines, and other pots that grace her big porch every growing season; until last night, she’d had someone push them back against the house wall for shelter, and this morning her porch looked so barren without them.    But as of today, the marigolds were still blooming away in my garden; some even had fresh buds.

I bought some spring-blooming bulbs this autumn; I bought a few bags (from a limited selection) from a local non-profit that provides green public spaces in this area and was selling bulbs as a fundraiser (in October), got a bunch at half price at the hardware store (they discounted what they still had in stock partway through October), and then ordered some from Old House Gardens in their last week of sales (early November).  The non-profit sold me snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii, not the more common in the US G. nivalis), miniature daffodils (one cultivar, but I can’t remember the name), and mixed species tulips; the hardware store had predominantly tulips left, but they also had a bit of other things, and I bought mixed crocii, heirloom hyacinth ‘L’Innocence’ (though the label didn’t mark it as such, I knew that it was – or at least is supposed to be, though as I’ve mentioned before, counterfeits of real heirlooms are rife in the bulb trade), a couple of daffodils, and an allium; and from OHG I got mostly assortments – an assortment of lilies, an assortment of daffodils, and an assortment of various types of bulbs – as well as ‘Mabel,’ one of the few tulips still in-stock, and crocus ‘Roseus,’ which was about the only crocus still in-stock.  I still haven’t finished planting the last of them, but with the mild November we had, it’s not the end of the world.

There’s a new flower up for one of my white autumn-blooming crocuses.  Yes, on 1 Dec.  Those little bulbs are just the most amazing things, I swear.  Another thing that was just astonishing this year was the runner beans, as I mentioned in my last entry (though they grew even more after that).  And even though it has finally truly fallen below freezing, some of them are still growing away (though admittedly, no longer producing pods).  More of the greens that I sowed in our cool, rainy early summer have sprouted in their pots in recent weeks – I’ve got young kale and chard up as well as other assorted greens.   Ironically, since the pots are in the back garden, many of them are actually getting more sun now that the trees in the back yard are leafless than they were earlier in the growing season, even though the sun is lower in the sky and doesn’t travel as far across said sky as it does in the warmer months.  I placed them in the back yard partially so the midsummer shade would keep them from bolting; I placed them in an area that’s in partial sun during the warm months.  Since these pots are new this year, it’s been a treat to see how well they’re doing now – an unexpected bonus.

I will try to write more next time, and to update much sooner.

Long Time No Post 22 May 2009

I’m sorry it’s been over a month since I updated.  The thing about spring is that you’ve got so much to do in the garden that’s it’s often a choice (at least for me) between updating the garden blog and actually being out in the garden!  I have some partially finished posts saved on my computer and hopefully I will be able to finish those and upload them soon.  I also have a lot of photographs to upload, hopefully also soon.  In the meantime, here is a brief update on things here in the past month-plus:

*The shade/partial-shade garden in back is doing really well.  Spring is really its best season, I think.  There have been bulb blooms, woodland phloxes, epimediums, primroses, and violets, and now the columbines and wild native ginger and the alpine strawberries and the last bulb (Silver Bells)  and the new lowbush blueberries and new mourning widow cranesbill are blooming, and the foxgloves and comfrey are budded. The foxgloves I seeded in last year have survived the winter with pretty good germination and most of them are budded (in addition to the foxgloves that I had last year; all but one of those have come back for another year). The comfrey is doing unbelievably better than its sad start when I first planted it last year (if I hadn’t watered it regularly, I think it would have died) – it is huge and has several bud clusters and looks like it is forming new ones as well.

*More improbable winter survivors: In the back garden, the Salvia patens has survived another winter, and this year not just one calla lily has survived, but five (so far)!  In the front, all the agastaches appear to have survived, even the ones that weren’t supposed to be winter-hardy here.  Additionally, the two hardy begonias finally sprouted over the past day, rewarding my belief in them.  That means that all but two things survived in pots in the back garden – the ones that didn’t make it were one epimedium and one sedge.  Even the other stuff in tiny pots did, like violets and lyre-leafed sage.  My incredible experience with this last year led me to take more risks with it this past year, and I know I’m lucky my risking paid off.

*Self-seeding: There has also been some nice self-seeding.  I always appreciate plasnts that are tough enough to be able to self-seed in my harsh front garden.   The sundial lupine (Lupinus perennis), in particular, has pleased me so.  I’ve counted at least five seedlings, some nearish the parent plant but others farther afield in the garden.  Sunflowers have again self-seeded and/or been seeded in by birds.  It also looks like the tovara (‘Painter’s Palette’) has self-seeded this year (something it is notorious for doing, and how I first got my plants – a friend gave me their self-seeded seedlings), and it looks like there may be at least one baby echinacea as well, which would please me so.  The squill, muscari, and glory of the snow have all developed seedheads, but we’ll see if that results in actual self-seeding (I hope so).

*Overwintered plants: I carried out most of the overwintered plants today, another hot and sunny day here.  The brugmansia (‘Charles Grimaldi,’ now with me for two years), Cestrum (‘Orange Zest’), and lemongrass have done the best over the winter, all growing significantly from their size in autumn.  The sweet violet and fuschia (sharing a pot) and the tweedia and snail vine have also done decently.  The bay seems to still be alive but is continuing not to seem particularly happy, still about the same size it was when I got it several months ago.  I saw that the nursery is offering bay laurels that are larger and look more robust than the one I got from them last year, and am considering trying a second plant to see if it does better than the first one has.

*Blooms in front: We are up to the stage where the heirloom irises are blooming or budded.  ‘Eleanor Roosevelt’ was first (as she is well-known for being even in gardens with dozens of irises), with just one bloom so far. ‘Gracchus’ is blooming now, with several more buds spread over two bloom stalks, and there are many buds on ‘Quaker Lady’ and ‘Mme Chereau,’ which were the two irises to bloom their first year here (last year).  My other three irises have yet to show visible bloom stalks, but I haven’t given up hope yet.  All seven are growing more robustly than last year (when I think the trauma of having their roots stomped on, having heavy things dragged over, etc. by the workmen really damaged them), so I think there is definitely a possibility they will yet develop bud stalks. The wild native columbine is also blooming (I planted that this spring) as well as the Mt. Atlas daisies, and there are buds on the (parent) sundial lupine, the false/Carolina lupine, the peach-leaaved bellflower, the dianthuses ‘Rainbow Loveliness,’ the chives (which have been budded since the last heat wave in late April), and one each of the perennial salvias and the cranesbills.  There are also a lot of blooms on annuals I’ve planted – pansies, violas, bacopas, heliotropes, snapdragons, Swan River daisies, stocks, Felicia heterophyllas (that beyond-gorgeous blue-on-blue daisy that I planted last year, not realizing it was a different Felicia than the species I’d grown the year before until it bloomed), an alpine calendula I’ve not grown before, …  Lots of success with direct-sowing in front, as usual.  There are a ton of clarkias (nearly 100% germination, as last year) as well as smaller numbers of many other things, such as California poppy, annual poppy, corncockle, calendula, and love-in-a-mist.

*Crops: The fava/broad beans have started blooming!  The garden peas are growing like mad now.  Some of the garden peas had poor germination in the first round, so I recently seeded in a second batch of those and they are catching up now (‘New Mexico,’ ‘Tall Telephone (AKA Alderman),’ and ‘Mammoth Melting’ are the ones I can remember off the top of my head).  I don’t know if it was a difference in placement (perhaps different amount of sunlight/different intensity, different texture to the soil, etc.), if perhaps they happened to be more prone to rotting before sprouting than the other cultivars, or what.  The fava/broad beans seem to have had pretty even germination rates amongst them, even though they are planted in a row westish to eastish like the peas are.  The lentils, meanwhile, have had very uneven germination.  (If you forget, this is my first year growing lentils.  See a recent post for more details.)  ‘Spanish Pardina’ germinated first and to date has germinated best (I think it may have had 100% germination).  ‘Black Beluga’ germinated second and has similarly had overall second-best germination.  The other three haven’t done as well, with a handful (‘French Blue,’ ‘Petite Crimson’) to none (‘Urid Dal’) up so far.  I’ve also had no srpouts of the garbanzo ‘Black Kabouli,’ but my beans ‘Yellow Arkiara’ (the earliest garden bean to plant) have sprouted and are growing nicely, and now with the heat and sun, the runner beans and purple-podded beans are coming up as well.  (Purple-podded beans can be planted earlier than other beans because there’s a special chemical in them that both gives them the purple coloring and makes them less prone to rotting in cool, wet soil.)  Aphids turned out to have sheltered over the winter on the fuschias and decimated the majority of my seedlings in just a day.  After they had mostly died out, I started a second batch of seedlings.  I’ve got lots of young plants again now:  26 cherry tomatoes (nearly 100% germination), 20 regular-sized tomatoes, 12 tomatillos, and 2 chiles (the chiles survived the onslaught better than the tomatoes and tomatillos, so I didn’t seed as many new ones in).  I’ve never had aphids on indoor seedlings before, and it’s really a serious pain.  I also got a cherry tomato plant at the living green festival my town held recently.  A non-profit that does gardening work locally was selling them to raise money.  They said it was an heirloom hand-selected by their main grower (and indeed, it appears to be named after him), but the two people staffing the stall couldn’t tell me more about it.  When I tried to ask more detailed questions, they just kept shrugging and saying, “It’s a cherry tomato,” as if that explained everything.  So I figured I’d just grow it and see for myself what the answers to my questions are.  There are also shallots, parsley, cilantro, French sorrel, thyme, and sage growing in front, and the scallions, chives (or as the person that gave me the Chinese leek division two years ago calls them, “American chives”), lavenders, winter savory, and Chinese leek/garlic chives have all survived the winter and are doing excellently.  I also finally planted the bare-rooted highbush blueberries in front since my last post, and after initial shock, they seem to be adjusting well.  In the sifted compost, I found a squash vine, and transplanted it to the main crop area.  I’ve also got melon seeds to sow.  Today’s a ‘fruit day’ in biodynamic parlance, as is tomorrow, so I should do that while the time is right.  Perhaps I should seed in my edamames today too, and give them a chance to get going before the pole beans shade them out (which seems to have been their biggest problem the last two years).

*Compost: Yesterday, in anticipation of yesterday and today’s heat, sun, and wind, I mulched all the back beds and the main crop area in the front bed with compost.  I also top-dressed the front’s plants that I know most like it – the Oriental poppies, peonies, scallions, and chives – plus I added some compost around the blueberries, stocks, and alpine calendula.

*Caterpillars: I found a caterpillar in the crop patch recently, the first I’ve ever seen in the windy, hot, high front garden!  It was so convincing at playing dead I thought it really might actually be dead until I gently poked it with a twig and it freaked out.  I also found a couple caterpillars in the back garden yesterday, one green and hanging out on the sifted-compost holder and the other munching the comfrey.

*New plants: I mentioned some of the new plants above.  I’ve also gotten more new plants from the nursery and mail-order.  I’ve planted some of them and others are awaiting planting. Some of them, particularly much from my Select Seeds mail-order, are meant to go in pots:  a datura, petunias, fuschias, tender (‘zonal’) geraniums.  I’ve also got flowering tobacco, salvias, tender vines,  coleuses, and more from Select Seeds.  I’ve already planted lantanas and some salvias and a double-flowered feverfew and a silver foliage plant from them. I’ve also got some tender “bulbs” to plant – dahlias and gladiolas and a rain lily from Old House Gardens and a few cannas from the local hardware store (Old House Gardens had already sold out of cannas by the time I placed my quite tardy order).

I think that’s plenty for today!  More another day.

Peonies, Hardy Cyclamen, & Bulbs / Hawk 31 October 2008

I love gardening in autumn.  Today was a perfect October day – sunny and warmer than recent days, with highs around 60 F, and a breeze that started out feeling pleasant before the wind started to feel colder.  The soil was cool, but my ungloved hands acclimated.   A friend helped me with work in the garden this afternoon.  We planted the two peony roots (Paeonia officianalis ‘Rubra Plena’ and peony ‘Monsieur Martin Cahuzac’) and the hardy sowbread cyclamen (finally!) – I talked about them in much more detail in my recent post ‘Help! I’m surrounded by bulbs!’ – and some of the spring-blooming bulbs.  We planted some of the snow crocuses, a bag of alliums (Allium sphaerocephalum), Siberian squill (Scilla siberica), Turkish glory of the snow (Chionodoxa sardensis), the original grape hyacinth (Muscari botrioydes), and silver bells (Ornithogalum nutans).  I love working in the yard in autumn because there are so many fewer fellow cityfolk outside, and it’s easier to imagine you’re somewhere other than right off one of the busiest roads in my town. Today was a beautiful day to be October’s swansong.  Happy Halloween, everyone!

As we were finishing up with the bulbs, I looked up and was quite startled to realize a very large bird was sitting above us in one of the backyard’s trees, looking out over the roof of the house to the city spread below.  About one minute later, it took off, flying over the roof and out of sight.  A short time later, after I was inside, I happened to be standing at a window when I saw it fly back this way and over the house again.  I think it was a Red-Tailed Hawk.  I had a hawk in my garden!  How cool is that?

Frost’s Fickle Fingers / Bulbs All Here 22 October 2008

Frost’s fickle fingers have so far primarily touched the Hawaiian blue eyes, which nearly died one of the coldest nights.  It might frost again tonight.  So far, weirdly, the basil in a pot in the back yard appears fine.  I say ‘weirdly’ because the back yard often feels ten degrees cooler than the front yard.

I waited too long to order from Odyssey, I discovered when I checked their website tonight and read a big red script saying their fall shipping season had ended and the remaining catalog is for reference only.  I guess it’s just as well, as my two small but impressively heavy remaining boxes from Brent and Becky’s arrived today, stuffed with dwarf irises and snow crocuses and alliums and early-blooming daffodils.  I caught a cold yesterday and between that and the crisp weather of late and prioritizing of bringing in tender plants, I have fallen behind on bulb planting.  Now that the heat is on at night and sometimes during the day, it’s getting more urgent too, as there’s nowhere truly cold left to store the bulbs.  (The basement is mildewy and prone to flooding.)  It’s supposed to be 60 F and sunny Friday, so hopefully I’ll be feeling somewhat better by then.  First I need to plant the peonies and the cyclamen, then the snowdrops and crocuses and frits and scilla and muscari, then the daffodils, last the tulips and alliums.  Small early-blooming bulbs and daffodils do best if their roots get established this fall, but tulips prefer the soil to be cool before they go in.

And in the midst of all this frost and rain (it rained on and off yesterday and today) and wind and fluctuating temperatures, the fall-blooming crocuses are going along merrily blooming.  Sometimes they flop over, what with their lesser weatherproofing than their spring relatives, but they recover and keep blooming away.  Crocuses, whether they bloom in autumn, winter, or spring, are the most amazing little creatures to me.  Frost, snow, storms, ice, hot day, cold day, wind – whatever, they just don’t care.  I can hardly imagine a more cheerful little flower, or a better return on one’s value than planting a pack of a kind of crocus that increases over the years.

Help! I’m surrounded by bulbs! / Photos 18 October 2008

The great bulb influx has continued unabated.  After receiving the colchicums and fall crocuses and other fall-blooming & early-planted bulbs from Brent and Becky’s (as mentioned in a recent post), I received the second half of my order from Odyssey Bulbs, and then I received my order from Old House Gardens.  I’ve still got my not-shipped-early spring-blooming bulbs from Brent and Becky’s to receive, as well as my spring-blooming bulbs Odyssey order if I remember to make it before they sell out.

I’ve spent a few hours in the garden planting fall-blooming crocuses, and have almost finished doing that, just having the plain saffron crocuses to go (I already planted the more reliably blooming – and thus, more expensive – cultivar of saffron crocus commonly sold as ‘Cashmirianus’).  I also already planted the two spring-blooming colchicums I got (only two because they are rare and thus, more expensive than fall-blooming colchicums).  I find fall-blooming crocuses more difficult to place than many things, because they like the conditions of the front garden, but since they bloom when so much other stuff has already bushed out and hasn’t died yet, I have to place them in spots where they can be seen in my sloping garden.  Spring-blooming bulbs are easier to place, because so little has grown very tall yet in the spring garden when they bloom that I can plant them pretty much anywhere to have them be seen from the sidewalk.

I’ve still got to plant some things that I should have already planted – the fritillaries, the snowdrops, and a few things from the new order from Old House Gardens – two peony roots and a hardy cyclamen and Siberian squill.  The cyclamen is a fall-bloomer known as “sowbread cyclamen” (Cyclamen hederifolium syn. C. neapolitanum), and you can see a photo of it at OHG’s site.  The peonies are ‘Rubra Plena’ (Paeonia officinalis, the peony Europeans and colonists grew [and used medicinally] before the introduction of Chinese peonies; photo at OHG’s site) and lovely ‘Monsieur Martin Cahuzac’ (a P. lactiflora cultivar; photo at OHG’s site).  (Tip:  Be sure to plant peony roots with the “eyes” close to the surface, or you’ll get plenty of foliage but few to no flowers.)  The bulbs, cyclamen, and peonies that I should be planting are all stored in dirt in bags in a cool, fairly dark closet right now.  They’re doing so-so or well (depending on what they are), but I need to get planting soon.  It’s been delayed because of new priorities due to colder nights and threat of frost, which I will discuss more in the next entry I write.   For now, here are a few of the hundreds of photos on my computer that I’ve yet to share here:

Fall crocuses blooming. These are some of the ones I planted last year.

More fall crocuses blooming. Another patch from last year.

A closer view of the same fall crocus patch as the last photo.

Autumn sun shining through the front garden

Aster October Skies & hyssop-leaved boneset

The corner of the front garden: Swan river daisies (2 lavender, 1 white), rosemary Irene (which drapes), goldenrod (Golden Fleece, I believe), Russian sage, ornamental grass Shenandoah Purple, rudbeckia Indian Summer, creeping zinnia (yellow daisy-like flowers; not really a zinnia), and more. Click photo for full-sized version.

More Work in the Garden / Bulbs Planted in Early Autumn 24 September 2008

Firstly, I remembered what I’d forgotten for yesterday’s post.  The other plant I bought for the back garden at the plant sale was an astilbe.  The other plant I bought in the two for one sale at the nursery was a catmint (yes, I know I didn’t even realize that I was forgetting it!), “Little Titch” which I’d read this summer is supposed to be an excellent rather dwarf cultivar, though I can’t even remember where I read it.

I had also forgotten to mention that I went to the nursery’s first end-of-season sale of the season as well, when they sell off the sad small-pot perennials that haven’t sold all season.  Every year I do very well in that sale because I’m not afraid to nurse plants back to vibrancy and I don’t mind many of the plants no one else here seems to like (this year, as last, lepoard’s banes were amongst the leftovers; poor leopard’s bane, so underutilized here).  At that sale, I got two different foxglove cultivars (judging by their differing leaves, I think they also have different parentage), ice plant ‘Mesa Verde’, a second Mt. Atlas daisy, and a couple other things that I am (surprise, surprise!) currently forgetting.  Groundcovers for hot places seemed to not have sold very well, which I find weird; maybe people didn’t realize they were groundcovers for hot places?  Honestly, it seems like few people even know what Mt. Atlas daisy is.  Poor Mt. Atlas daisy.  It’s a lovely plant for those truly hot spaces, the kind of place where nothing else will grow as it would get fried.

I also didn’t mention my own contributions to the plant sale.  My top contribution was a couple of plants of tovara ‘Painter’s Palette’.  My main blog post on that plant, from some months ago, still regularly gets hits from web searches for info on the plant, so I was pretty sure that it would sell well.  I ended up wishing I’d donated more of them, as the two I donated had both sold within ten minutes of the start of the sale.  One of the volunteers at the sale described it as “the plant to plant where nothing else will grow.”  I love that description of it.

Secondly, I did some more work in the garden today.  This time I planted the colchicums from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs.  Unfortunately, they’d been in their paper bags for so long that one of them had started to rot and a few more looked like they might have started to get mold on them.  I put the rotting one in the composter and planted the possibly-molding ones by themselves so that they wouldn’t infect anything else if so.  It’s absolutely my own fault; I forgot to open the paper bags to vent them as soon as they came, and I’m sure that my stupid (really, really stupid) lack of providing proper air circulation is what’s to blame for the issues.  Regardless, I planted four ‘Giant’ (also sold as ‘The Giant’), five ‘Waterlily’ (also sold as ‘Double Waterlily’), one ‘Alboplenum’, and five ‘Violet Queen’.

After what happened, I’m hoping to be able to plant the rest of the bulbs tomorrow, even though they all look so far like they’re doing better than the colchicums.  The remaining Brent and Becky’s Bulbs are autumn-flowering crocuses and some things whose bulbs should preferably be planted earlier in fall than most spring bloomers – snowdrops and (smaller-bulbed) fritillaries.  I got Crocus cartwrightianus ‘Albus’ , C. laevigatus ‘Fontenayi’, C. ochroleucus, C. pulchellus ‘Zephyr’, C. speciosus, C. speciosus ‘Albus’, C. speciosus ‘Oxonian’, and C. medius.  (I already have some autumn-blooming crocuses, but luckily for bulb companies, I tend to forget which ones until I actually physically see their blooms in late autumn, at which point it would be too late to plant new ones, as – quite unlike colchicums – they prefer a period of settling in prior to blooming.)

For spring bloomers that ship early, from B&BB I got guinea hen/snakeshead frits (Fritillaria meleagris), Fritillaria uva-vulpus, Fritillaria verticillata, Fritillaria michailovskyi ‘Multiflora’, Fritillaria pudica ‘Giant’, and five snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii, Galanthus nivalis, Galanthus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’, Galanthus nivalis ‘Viridi-apice’, and Galanthus woronowii AKA G. ikariae).  I also got some fall-blooming crocuses, and spring-blooming frits and snowdrops from Odyssey Bulbs, but all they’ve shipped so far is their colchicums (which have been happily blooming away in the back garden with last year’s colchicums for a couple of weeks now).  Though the crocuses, frits, and snowdrops sound like a lot of bulbs, in actuality they are all quite tiny bulbs so they will be much easier to dig space for than the colchicums.  A single “bulb” (really a corm) of colchicum ‘Giant’ is larger than a pile of fifty guinea hen frits!

As usual, I’m also behind on planting actual plants.  I’ve got a lot of work to do by frost (that ever-moving target of any gardener who keeps gardening all growing season), but thankfully this is the time of year when I generally start to get more energy, though not necessarily more free time to go along with it.

In the garden lately 13 September 2008

The asters and goldenrods have started blooming.  It’s truly, officially autumn now, regardless of the fact that it’s supposed to be in the 80s and muggy in two days.

Fall-blooming bulbs have been arriving in boxes.  A week ago a friend helped me plant a batch of colchicums amongst the already-growing ones in the back garden.  Colchicums are the ultimate instant gratification bulb:  Just a week later, most of them are already blooming.  A new box, this one from Brent and Becky’s, arrived yesterday.  This one has colchicums, fall-blooming crocuses, and the most sensitive spring-blooming bulbs that the best bulb dealers will ship earlier than the rest; this includes snowdrops, winter aconites, and many fritillaries, amongst others.  In my case, there are some snowdrops and frits.  I love winter aconites, but I think they would struggle in the suckingly dry soil that lies underneath the several trees ringing the back yard, and the front would be too sunny even if it weren’t dry and windy.

Former tropical storm Hanna moved through here recently.  The wind from it did some damage in the garden, but it wasn’t terrible.  The rain seemed to reinvigorate much of the garden.

I’ve heard two reports this month of a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird in my town, the only reports I’ve ever heard of them in this urban environment.  (One sighting was just yesterday.)  I keep hoping it will wander over to my garden with my agastaches, my salvias, my scarlet runner beans, my red nasturtiums, and my finally-blooming cardinal climber, but if it’s come, I didn’t see it (which is not implausible though).

I also heard a report this week that this summer a young deer was spotted in a nearby (also urban) neighborhood.  Freaky stuff!

I really, really will post photos sometime soon.  My pollen allergies have been killing me this week.  Stupid ragweed.

More about colchicums 16 August 2008

How much rain we’ve been getting:  Our normal rainfall for the past 30 days is 3.05 inches.  As of 4 pm yesterday, we had actually gotten 8.83 inches, and that’s not including yesterday evening’s storms or the rain that fell overnight.  And clouds are once again building in the cool, humid sky as I type.

I got a couple hits overnight via the tag “colchicum” (tagged on yesterday’s post) so I thought I’d write a bit more about them.  Colchicum are often called “autumn crocus” or “autumn-flowering crocus” which I think confuses people into not realizing they are distinct.  Colchicum look rather like very big crocuses, but they come in a different range of colors. The ones commonly available in cultivation tend to be in shades of white, pink, and lavender, sometimes more than one color on a single flower.  A few cultivars have what are descriptively called “waterlily blooms” and those tend to be more expensive than the single blooms.  Most colchicum produce more than one bloom from a single bulb, some species producing up to twenty flowers per bulb.  Depending on species, they can bloom any time from August to October in my climate, and into winter in milder climates.  The flowers tend to last several days and tend to be more weather-resilient than many spring-flowering bulbs.  I discovered last autumn that they seem to be visited regularly by ants.  The ants in my garden were obsessed with the blooms and trekked up and down them all day every day.  However, apparently none of them were pollinated, as in most species the ripening seeds appear with the leaves in spring, and none of mine had seeds this year.

My most successful attempt yet at growing colchicums has been in this garden.  I have them planted by a retaining wall, towards the bottom of a slope.  I mixed compost and gritty material into the bed as I was planting them.  I suggest adding something gritty such as small gravel or crushed oyster shells when you plant them.  I have mine in partial shade, by which I here mean that they are in full sun part of the day, dappled sun (from a tree canopy) part of the day, and full shade part of the day.  Many species of colchicum are native to hilly or mountainous regions (as are many species of crocus and tulip) and they seem to do well in a cool microclimate and on a slope.  Colchicum are so enthusiastic about blooming that if you leave them sitting in a wheelbarrow in the garden for a day, they’ll often bloom just waiting to be planted.

Blooms of colchicum 'Disraeli' in August 2007

While away / Since returning 15 August 2008

While I was gone, one of the places where I stayed had an organic garden on the grounds.  The garden was gorgeous and a lot of wildlife inhabited it.  Three hummingbirds seemed to live in the garden, and spent a lot of time nectaring at the flowers in it.

Hummingbird at cleome in Santa Fe foothills

Another hummingbird at cleome

Yet another hummingbird at cleome

I took a ton of pictures of the garden and will post more another time.

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It’s been raining almost every day since I returned from New Mexico, so I’ve done little in the garden but weed.  (How easily most weeds slide out of soaked soil!)  I’ve still got a big pile of plants to plant, and I’ve added more to it.  The nursery is in the midst of their sale frenzy, and no surprise, as it’s the time of year nurseries go crazy for sales.  They are selling off their remaining herbs at $1.98 each, so I bought several.  I’ve got another horehound and another oregano ‘Hopley’s Purple’, as well as a “true oregano” (as the tag calls it), a basil that was starting to bolt (I saw how much the bees were going crazy for the flowers on the already-bolted basil plants, and bought it just for them), gotu kola (a medicinal herb that’s tender here and which I’m going to attempt to overwinter indoors), and four scented geraniums – lemon rose, ginger, lime, and an untagged one that smells sort of like an organic suntan lotion and has beautiful small, crinkly leaves that seem on the silvery end of green and gorgeous small white flowers (it’s the only one that was flowering at the nursery, and the last of its kind so I couldn’t check the tag of another pot of the same cultivar).  That beautiful variegated scented geranium I got in spring hadn’t fully sold out, much to my surprise, so I almost got a second one, but decided that was excessive.

The nursery got another delivery of annuals yesterday, so I went back today to get some more plants and a couple of window boxes to put the scented geraniums in.  I got four mums to pot up and put on either side of the building’s front door (and the pots to put them in), three ornamental peppers to replace one of the pansy patches that died while I was gone, two large pots of pansies to replace the other two mostly dead pansy/viola patches that also died while I was gone, and a gaura, which I got just because the bees and I like them. Later today I potted up the scented geraniums and the mums.  I put the yellow double mum and the single mum with red petals and a yellow center in one pot and the double dark mauve mum and the double deep orange mum in the other pot, and they’re now framing the doorway, making the building look much cheerier.  I bought less expensive pots for the mums than I normally would as I live on a busy street and am assuming there’s a possibility they’ll be stolen.  (While I was gone, a marigold plant was dug up and taken, and several clusters of ripe parsley seeds were simply broken off the plant and removed by another thief.  Such is gardening in the city.) The ornamental peppers were the nursery manager’s idea.  She thought it would be neat to have something so different in one of the spots where the pansies had been.  She knew the delivery was coming in on Thursday, and advised me to wait for them to come instead of impulse-buying a less fitting filler.

I still need to place my fall-planted bulb orders.  I know that I’m getting the orders in so late that I’ve missed out on some of the returning customer discounts and early bird sales and such, but I’ve had such a busy past month I just haven’t had time to even organize it all.  Yesterday I sat down and wrote out my annual list of bulbs I think would be good in the different microclimates, and soon I will go through and see what’s still available on Old House Gardens’ website and place an order.   After I see what I get from them, I’ll think about what else I’d like to order and from whom.  I also especially like Odyssey Bulbs and Brent and Becky’s Bulbs. Ideally I’d like to add some more colchicums to the colchicum bed since they seem to do so well there, but I don’t know if I’m too late to order them (they are not just fall-planted but fall-blooming, so they usually need to be ordered earlier than bulbs that simply are stuck in the ground in autumn to bloom the following year).  I didn’t understand the full glory of colchicums till I created this bed last year.  Being able to see them up close in a raised bed shows their best side.