Gardening year retrospective, part 2 16 January 2009

Here are more thoughts on the past year’s growing season.

Biggest Flower Successes

• Clarkia – As I said here last summer, I was astonished at how well the clarkia did this year.  I was used to clarkia growing in partial shade in moist soil in a sheltered location.  I seeded them into the front garden as an experiment, curious as to what would happen.  I was astonished at the extremely high germination rate – one of the highest of any seeds I’ve ever sowed in this garden – and the long, beautiful bloom time.  The plants were shorter than in my old garden, but they were tough as nails and lasted a long time and stuck their little flowers out of every crevice that seeds had fallen.  I will most definitely be seeding them in again this coming year, and am planning to look for more varieties (almost every clarkia seed pack I’ve ever seen, if not every one, is a mix of at least two colors though, usually more).  Annual here.
• Patrinia – Patrinia was a real star of the garden this year.  Tall and graceful, with a very  long bloom time and flowers that attracted scores of pollinators and predator insects, the plants also served as a living trellis for a Japanese morning glory and one of the cardinal vines.  Perennial here.
• Cardinal vine – Speaking of cardinal vine, these did amazingly this year!  The leaves were quite interesting in the lengthy lead up to the flowering time, and when they finally did flower starting fairly late in the season (I’m guessing they are day length sensitive, though not positive), the blooms were amazingly beautiful.  Even the leaves that had been frost damaged provided a beautiful contrast to the leaves that were still green as the season wound down.  This was my first time growing them, but it won’t be my last – I am most definitely growing these again!  Annual here.
• Sweet peas! – This was my best year for sweet peas in years.  I specifically picked heat-resistant varieties and it made a huge difference.  I was astonished at how long they held up under incredibly adverse conditions, the kind of conditions I imagine as sweet pea hell – blistering heat, strong winds, regular dry soil.  Annual.
• Rudbeckia ‘Indian Summer’ – This was my first year growing this cultivar, annual but reputed to be a good self-seeder.  I got it in an approximately 2″ x 2″ x 2″ pot from the farmers’ market.  It did spectacularly, flowering till hard frost.  And birds loved the seeds!  They started eating them while the plant was still flowering.   Annual here.
• Echinaceas! – The echinaceas had a brilliant year, flowering wonderfully and producing huge luscious seedheads.  Like with rudbeckia ‘Indian Summer,’ birds loved the seeds too.   Perennial here.
• Sunflower ‘Vanilla Ice’ – I’m guessing whomever named this doesn’t know much about 80s pop music.  Regardless, this was the one sunflower that did stupendously for me this year.  I got it as a young plant from a gardening acquaintance and it was the one sunflower from her to thrive despite the shock of transplanting (which sunflowers hate) and it bloomed early and often till late summer, when it abruptly stopped (which is apparently common for cucumber-leaved sunflowers).  It was my first experience growing a cucumber-leaved type of sunflower and I enjoyed it so that I am planning to expand their presence in my garden next year.  I have also read this winter that birds will choose their seeds first.  I’m sure the fact that their seeds are produced earliest of the annual sunflowers helps in that regard.   Annual.
• Fall-blooming crocus and colchicum – Each year I add more and each year the display just gets better and better.  When the snowpack melted at the end of December 2008 the last few fall-blooming crocuses were still blooming away underneath!  Perennial here.

Garden Failures of 2008

• Bean ‘Yellow Arikara’ – I said at the time I planted these that I thought I was planting them too late and I was right.  They did abysmally.  This year I am definitely planting them earlier, before the last frost at the very latest.   This type of bean was grown by the Arikara Dakotas according to Monticello (where I got my seeds) and were valuable as the earliest bean.   Lewis and Clark got them on their trip West.  Monticello’s seed store has a page of information on them.  I am still very interested in succeeding with these and I am going to give it another go this spring.
• Okra! – As you likely know if you have been reading this blog for a while, my okra planting was another abysmal failure this year.  Most of the okra seeds (I tried two cultivars this year) did not germinate; the ones that did took a while; and of the five seeds that did germinate, two were snapped off at the bottom of the stem by birds and three others died in infancy for no apparent reason.  Okra is such a gorgeous plant – you can see its relation to hibiscus in its flowers – that many adventurous garden writers recommend growing it ornamentally even if you don’t have any interest in harvesting okra.  I am planning to try okra again this year despite last year’s severe problems, though I think I will try different cultivars this time.
• Lima beans – In my years gardening in Boston I have never once had a good lima bean year and I am close to giving up on growing them in this climate.  This year I didn’t see a single lima bean pod even though several plants sprouted and grew a decent amount.  I think part of my problem this time was that the garden beans and hyacinth beans grew faster than the lima beans, shading them out and possibly causing them to decline in health.  I have a few different ideas for how to change this.  One is to plant cultivars that grow taller; another is to plant cultivars that produce faster; a third is to change where I plant them so that they won’t be shaded even if the others grow faster.  I haven’t definitely decided what to do.
• Garden peas – Like with the bean “Yellow Arikara,” I simply planted my peas too late this year.  As a result I only got a small crop before the heat made them stop producing and then killed them.  I just need to get them in earlier next year.  I’m also considering trying at least one cultivar that’s reputed to be heat tolerant after having such success with heat tolerant/resistant sweet peas in the past growing season.
• In situ zinnia sowing – Like with some other things on the list, my timing was just off.  They turned into robust plants that produced lots of foliage and some buds but were damaged by frost before they could ever actually bloom.  As above, I just need to be more together about timing in the coming year.  (The zinnias put in as seedlings did just fine.)
• Annual scabiosa – These did well planted as young plants from the farmers’ market last year, but the market didn’t sell them this year, so I sowed seeds myself.  As far as I could tell, not one so much as germinated.  No idea what happened here.
• Rudbeckia ‘Toto Rustic’ – These annual rudbeckias did great in 2007 but they were felled quickly in 2008.  Powdery mildew quickly overtook them and they never recovered.  I think planting them too late (I got them as seedlings from the farmers’ market) this year was part of it – our summer came on fast and hot, which caused trouble for many plants – and I also read this year that inconsistent water or too little water can cause powdery mildew in young rudbeckias.  Not sure I will bother trying these next year since ‘Indian Summer’ did so well without as much coddling.  (It even survived having powdery mildew, unlike the ‘Toto Rustic’s.)
• Sunflowers other than ‘Vanilla Ice’ – The rest of my intentionally planted sunflowers (all the common annual sunflower rather than ‘Vanilla Ice”s cucumber-leaved species) did much worse this year than last year.  No idea why. The only other sunflowers to do decently were planted by the birds and bloomed late in the season, one classic yellow flower per plant.
• Chervil – This bolted nearly as soon as I planted it and the seeds didn’t produce any more plants during the same growing season.  I think I planted it too late in the growing season and the stress on the cool-prefering plant was just too much for it to bear.

Next post: Plans for 2009.

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 Writings Elsewhere 12 October 2008

New post coming very soon!  Till then, check out my newest articles elsewhere:

• Sun-Loving Bulbs that Bloom in Early Spring: Plant Now for Splashes of Color in Late Winter
• Preserving the Herb Harvest for Winter: Harvest Your Own Spices and Make Your Own Personal Care Products

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.