Ahhh... Those Spring Garden Shows

Everyone seems to be enjoying those spring garden shows already, but the local one is still a month away, so I decided to get out my photos from last year and relive those fragrant fresh garden mulched, dreamily lit, dreamily designed moments.  A little anticipation never hurts.

If I had an unlimited budget and the desire to create an inspirational and luxurious outdoor living space for wonderful dinners, entertainment, and relaxation in a romantic setting, it might look a little like this- start with a magnificent superstructure-

 Add a large video screen and comfortable seating, as well as a well-equipped outdoor kitchen and barbeque-

Some natural rocks and subtle lighting enhance the impression of being alone in an exotic nocturnal landscape.

Some exhibits at the garden show incorporated metal sculpture-

A low maintenance landscape giving a natural feel to the garden for the nature lover...

Or reminders of our local wildlife treasures and volcanic terrain.

Stone water features can transport us to fountains and waterfalls,

Or we can add hardy palms and desert features for those who miss warmer climates.

What I considered the most impressive new plant is this symmetrical and soft-foliaged Mahonia 'soft caress', used in some landscapes with great effect.

Hardscaping with flagstones, low walls that could be used for seating, low maintenance plantings, bright or subtle lighting, and structures with drapes for privacy can enhance night time entertainment.

My appetite is whetted for this year's garden show soon, what inspires you?

Hannah

Spring Cleaning and Bed Preparation

Spring has finally arrived, at least on the calendar!  We have had an unusually cold March in the PNW, none of the usual days above 60* F.  It has also been rainy and grim.  So it's been nice to have at least a little sun and slightly dry weather to get out and begin the garden clean-up for spring planting.  Here for example is my signature view after winter's devastations and before cutting back dead material-

The wonderful ground cover Ceanothus gloriosus Point Reyes has spread well across the path from the deciduous cutleaf weeping Japanese Maple, and the early-blooming Hellebores, Muscari, and Primula are coming along behind it.

The most pressing chores are to trim off dead growth on the two Tree Peonies, and cut the clumps of Miscanthus close to the ground before they start to grow.  A few species tulips will make their appearance before long, like the delicate ethereal T. batalinii Bright Gem-

The hardy geraniums in the bottom of the photo will also hopefully spring forth into new ground-covering glory studded with flowers like bouquets-

But since I am predominantly concerned with the edible garden, I worked on vegetable bed preparations this week.  This bed was seeded with turnips, collards, and mustards last July to yield winter greens, now ready to pick-

Bed last August

The preparation consists of laying down newspaper to kill whatever weeds might be growing in the old squash, cucumber, and bean rows, leaving the brassicas in the middle for harvest.  Next week I will place some tunnels on the paper to keep out the rain and dry out the soil for planting the crops for this year, bush beans and mostly determinate tomatoes, along with peppers and eggplants, to provide some poisonous roots among the beans to hopefully discourage voles.

This bed was last year's tomato bed, with pole beans along one side, and this year will have squash, cucumbers,  more pole beans, and later in summer some brassicas for overwintering.   To see the tomato house that was here, see here, scroll down.

Preparation here consisted of removing plastic sheeting, PVC poles and structure, chicken wire and plastic trellis used to support the roof, and lots of bamboo poles and horizontal wires and the ties that had attached the tomatoes to the poles last year.   I put the old tomato vines in the trash to discourage fungal diseases that might overwinter in them.  Now I am ready to put newspaper on the ground to shade out weeds, and tunnels to dry the ground, like on the first bed.  Both of these beds are surrounded by welded wire fences supplemented by 8' tall bamboo poles with wires run at various levels to hopefully discourage deer from jumping in.  The newspaper mulches limit weeding, and soaker hoses running down each row simplify watering in the summer.

Vole strategies this year will consist of putting heavier amounts of lava rock in the planting holes, and perhaps installing a few hardware cloth boxes to enclose the root zones of a few squash and cucumbers since I had a lot of damage in these plants last year.

Happy spring!

Hannah

What's Blooming Now

This is what is blooming as of March 15, I had to retake some blurry photos so I'm a day late.  Most of the Pulmonaria have begun to bloom, though still on a small scale.  This is an atypically colored selection, Raspberry Splash-

And the deep cobalt blue of Pulmonaria trevi fountain-

One with several ages/colors of bloom-

 The early daffodils are starting to bloom, like the Cyclameneus recurved Jetfire-

And some unnamed early daffodil-

And of course there are the reliable early bloomers, the Hellebores, the white Christmas Hellebore in the usual bouquet-like clump-

 And some mixed burgundy and pink Helleborus orientalis-

The winter blooming heathers put on a good show now, this is Erica darleyensis-

The irrepressible Johnny-Jump-Up surprised me with blooms, it was self-sowing happily last fall and should spread nicely.

Another surprise was an early bloom on Epimedium sulphureum-

 And one of those flowers people tend to overlook in winter, on a contorted Hazelnut-

Some additional blooms that were not very photogenic were Galanthus, the snowdrop, a solitary Muscari, a soggy Crocus, which can look stunning when planted in sheets in a large area, and the unmentionable ubiquitous weed, Cardamine hirsuta, that despicable cress family plant that eventually shoots it's seeds forcefully in your face when you try to pull it up.

So, that is my list for today, to see other people's March blooms, check out-

May Dream Gardens

 Hannah

Flowers for Valentine's Day

I'm celebrating Valentine's Day by looking at what's blooming outside and indoors.  An indoor bloom with delightful fragrance is a holiday gift, a Paperwhite Narcissus-

A festive small orchid, Maxillaria sanguinea, is enchanting at this time of year in a west-facing window-

The lovely Oxalis triangularis is also in bloom, early.  The Purple Shamrock is a tuber, and very tough.  If the tubers are not watered in the winter, the tops die back and it makes it easier to divide them after they have increased.  Otherwise they do fine all year.

And then there are a few outdoors in a mostly inhospitable mid-winter.   Winner for most blooms would be the heather Erica darleyensis, now a large clump, some other

heathers blooming at other times of the year.  The Hellebores are reliably one of the winter bloomers, this is Helleborus orientalis, the Lenten Rose, which have been hybridized into a wide range of colors and spotted and double forms.

A very small inconspicuous but very fragrant white flower is on Sarcococca ruscifolia

And finally, wouldn't you know, the irascible dandelion.

On to another matter, the winter antics of my arch enemies, the voles.  I left a large piece of plastic on the lawn hoping to dry it out and put it away, which didn't happen, but it stayed there a long time and the lawn was converted into a vole amusement park-

Our lawn abounds in moss so the voles can freely create lots of surface runs-

Some new strategies I'm planning this year are to interplant some nightshade family plants in with my bush beans to make them less palatable to voles.  I will try eggplants and peppers in the ground for the first time, usually they are in pots.  I'm also trotting out many old determinate seeds and attempting to start them.  Some will, some won't.

Another strategy is to use higher levels of lava rock in the planting holes, which has saved many daylily plants from being eaten.  Also, I will use some hardware cloth in some holes to keep the voles away.

Meanwhile back to the indoor light garden.  A new crop for me will be Cardoons, from the Italian company Gourmet Seed.  They are a thistle, an artichoke relative, but the flowers are not eaten.  Instead the base of the plant is blanched and the fleshy ribs are eaten.  Like Artichokes, the leaves can be made into tea which is restorative to the liver, and aids digestion.

The Alpine strawberries sown in December are doing great, much bigger than ones sown in January.  They should be of a size to bloom and fruit this summer.

Well, have a nice restful remainder of the winter, and peruse those catalogs and internet sites for your plants to grow this year. 

Hannah

Joys of Winter Growing

Well, my seedlings from last month are getting larger.  I had to move the Butterfly Peas and Andrographis paniculata into my hydroponics set-up so they could get taller.  I clipped leaves off the lower stems of the Andrographis and pinched out the top  growth so I could dry some of the leaves and make the plants bushier.  I often grow herbs and at some point they die without my benefitting from their growth so I'm trying to actually use some. 

The Culantro, Eryngium foetidum, which has a flavor like Cilantro but is not related, is widely used in Mexico and Central America.  It is doing well and has been used in cooking a little so far.  The 6 varieties of Alpine Strawberries are coming along nicely and should be able to bloom and start bearing fruit sometime during the next summer.

In addition, I have some seedlings from seeds sown in October and  kept in the refrigerator until earlier this month.  The bottom right seedlings in the photo above are Hibiscus lasiocarpus.   Some Purple Milkweed, Asclepias purpurascens, came up as well.  And the very exciting Mertensia virginica, a Bluebell native to the eastern United States, has a single seedling up.  I failed to germinate any last year so it seems like quite an achievement.   Most pots are still sitting there with no growth, though.

More pots are in the refrigerator, among them some seeds that got temporarily mislaid that I found this week, all with edible berries, Rhus trilobata, Rhus aromatica, and Berberis fendleri, which High Country Gardens describes as tasting like sour cherries.  The rest are some new natives I'm attempting to grow, Houstonia rubra- very fragrant, Eriogonum ovalifolium, Asclepias asperula, Aquilegia formosa- a lovely red and yellow native columbine, and Agastache cusicki, a native licorice mint that needs chilling.

Under lights I'm starting more Agastaches- cana, aurantiaca, occidentalis, and rupestris.  These are very popular with bees and butterflies, and have fragrant foliage like peppermints and spearmints which are mostly non-native, but tend toward the anise and lemony fragrances.  They can also be used for flavoring dishes and dried for teas.  Some are starting to sprout at about 8 days after sowing.  I also sowed more strawberries, native Rudbeckia fulgida Goldsturm, and a lot of Dianthus superbus, the Fringed Pink, which has edible uses and is very fragrant.

I like to start some seeds by putting them in small ziplock bags from Michael's, with a piece of damp paper towel, so there is not as much loss as those started in pots.  Tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers do especially well like this.  Old seeds that failed to grow for me for several years in peat pots started this way.  I wait until the root has grown out a cm. or more then plant the seed in planting mix with a compost, peat moss, and perlite, which I heat in the microwave before planting to hopefully kill damping off fungus and fungus gnats.  So far I sprouted a bunch of Cardoon, and just started several eggplants.  Next will be some peppers and a few tomatoes, though after last year with so much cold weather in June and July, and consequent very late and poor tomato crops, I'm not growing many tomatoes this year.  I do hope to have good crops of beans, greens, cucumbers, and squash though, which did not seem very affected by the cool weather.

So, jump in and grow something under lights, it's fun to have only fungus gnats gnawing on my plants' roots instead of voles!

Hannah

Growing under lights

One of my most enjoyable fall/winter activities is growing plants under lights.  There is something soothing about watching new green life emerge when so many plants outside are being frozen, withered, and burnt with wind and cold.  I have a home-made set-up of a 3-tier metal shelf unit.  I use the bottom 2 shelves for holding 2 flats each, 10x20", and hang 2 4' fluorescent fixtures from the top and middle shelves.  Evenly spaced each shelf has about 11" of growing height.  I found that 2 1/4" square rose pots fit ideally into the flats, 4 deep and 9 rows long, very little wasted space.  My current starts from a sowing in early October-

Plants on the left are Andrographis paniculata, an Indian herb and flowering plant.  http://www.thymegarden.com/site/561124/product/S1009

In the center is an alternative to Cilantro, with the same flavor but a more substantial plant which will get bigger leaves and not be bent on going to seed as quickly as possible like most Cilantro plants I have grown.  It is Eryngium foetidum.  Most Eryngium's are spiny, this one included, so I expect it to be quite substantial.  The flavor of the leaves is supposed to be more intense and stand up better to cooking.
http://www.thymegarden.com/site/561124/product/S1313

On the right is the Butterfly pea, which should have a blue flower that is used to color rice blue in
Asian cooking.

At the other extreme, here is Cilantro delfino that is even more delicate and ferny than regular Cilantro.
http://www.thymegarden.com/site/561124/product/S1311

It will be interesting to try these out a little later.

Starting plants in the fall or winter gives them a size advantage next spring and makes their bloom season start earlier.  Plants that I just sowed December 2 which have not yet sprouted are 6 varieties of Alpine Strawberries, Fragaria vesca, from The Strawberry Store.  I grew 2 varieties last year, Alexandria and Delicious, from local seed packets, and found that they started blooming and fruiting quite early, and were still blooming and fruiting at the end of the growing season, though the small but tasty berries trickle in slowly, but continuously.

The Strawberry Store

The strawberries are exciting for the grandkids to seek, too.  I will see next spring how well they do their second year, and get to try out the new ones to see what differences there are in growth, size, and taste.  The new ones will be Ali Baba, Baron Solemacher, Reine des Vallees, Ruegen, Mignonette, Yellow Wonder, and the Italian ones- Fragola di Bosco and Fragola Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons), assuming they all grow.

The shelves really come into their own in January to May, though, when I start tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, basil, and other herbs, as well as some annuals and perennials that I want to start early.  I find them an indispensable gardening aid, and very inexpensive to set up.  They can be put in any available space and make little oases of green.

Happy Holidays!

Hannah

Fall blooms and colors

There are a few stalwart plants blooming now.  Some that have been reliable for several years are Asters, both novi-belgii and nova-angliai.  They add that little bit of color to the border, and I start to wonder why I haven't planted more of them.

These start growing in late summer and eventually get tall and start blooming, seemingly without any care.

Daboecia cantabrica 'Atropurpurea', Irish Heath, has been blooming and continues to bloom, with it's enchanting purple balloon flowers.

A Verbascum phoenicium started by seed last November has gotten big enough to start blooming now, focus is not very good.  The others from this sowing seem to want to wait until next year to bloom.  A Fibigia is on the left.  This is my vole-free gravel-laden bed that can grow peacefully except that lots of little weed seeds keep sprouting.

Some of those long-blooming perennials are still blooming-

Some of those great little Violas, Johnny-Jump-Ups.  Not only did they start blooming fast from seed, but then seeded arounnd some little babies that even made it to bloom by fall.  Some people don't like their invasive qualities.

A few stragglers of the Lychnis coronaria.

It doesn't seem like Fall without the thrill of those flaming leaves in reds, oranges, and yellows. I'm happy to live in a climate where the trees have a long fall to develope them, unlike Denver, Colorado where untimely fall snows turn green leaves into slushy brown ones.

This is my Aronia 'Viking'.  I harvested the berries earlier.  It is supposed to grow 6' tall but gets taller.

This is Amber Ghost Japanese Maple.  The colors became more of a flaming red later but I didn't get out to photograph it.

This is a cutleaf Weeping Japanese Maple, with some blueberries peeking out behind.  This one favors golden orange with red highlights, my other one is more a wine red.

This is
Hypericum frondosum.  It had nice coloration in fall of 2009, pictured here, but is still green today, there must not have been the right cold temperatures for it this year.  Burning bushes and maples seemed to color up fine.

Well, I'm spending a lot of time researching the native plants and some vegetables I want to grow next year.  It seems a lot of the plants in the mint family, Labiatae, that we all love to grow are non-native- lots of mints, oreganos and other herbs.  So I'm getting interested in a group of North American natives, the Agastaches.  I am looking at some that are natives and wanting to grow them next year.  I did grow one last year, Agastache foeniculum, which did make a nice little plant but it is an imported plant.  Hopefully it will bloom next year.  The Agastaches have nice aromatic foliage and can be used for tea plants, and are well-loved by hummingbirds, butterflies, and especially bees.  The flavors can be minty or can be lemon, anise, licorice, etc.  I'm excited to see how well they will do in taking ground away from the weeds and getting large.  Mints do well in that respect and when blooming are really aswarm with bees, including a lot of the smaller and native bees.  So it will be fascinating to compare them.

Well, this cold weather took everyone by surprise.  I hope the cool season greens in my deck stock tank can overweather the frozen conditions out there.  And the greens I planted in July.  I've been getting some very nice big turnips lately.

Happy Thanksgiving, my menu will feature vegetarian stir-fry with Asian squash, onions, ginger, mushrooms, Shungiku greens (Chrysanthemum coronaria), which I am contemplating growing next year, and water chestnuts; and then some oven-baked Asian eggplants with a little onion, baked to a mouth-watering deep brown perfection.

Hannah