Perennials

Corydalis lutea

Last week in the Allegheny Front, Doug Oster and Jessica Walliser were talking about putting in perennials. Jessica mentioned four of her favorites: Casa Blanca Oriental Lily (which I have), variegated solomon’s seal (which I have), Raspberry wine monarda, penstemon, and Corydalis lutea. (That sounds like 5 to me.) So I looked up the Corydalis lutea and it is a like a small bleeding heart with yellow flowers. It is native to the southern Alps and hardy in zones 4-8. The Wisconsin Master Gardeners have a nice plant file on Corydalis lutea which says it is short-lived but self-seeds prolifically. I remember one of Jessica’s other recommendations: dead nettle, which here is really invasive. It is not easy to germinate indoors because of its “complex dormancy requirements, requiring both warm and cold stratifications.”

Raspberry Wine Monarda

A search for the Raspberry Wine Monarda brought up Bluestone Perennials which is a mail order nursery located halfway between Cleveland and Erie. They have a lot of other interesting shrubs and perennials like Carolina Allspice, deciduous azaleas, butterfly bushes, and mock orange.

Gardening Update

I put too many things in late and didn’t put in any winter squash.  I put beans in in July — crockett’s victory garden said i could, and they are really struggling.  They won’t make it – it’s been too cold this year, and not really summer-like at all during July, which is usually our hottest month.

Bloodroot

Bloodroot

I was afraid that the voles had eaten my bloodroot but no, they came up just fine, only a little further back than I had remembered. Unfortunately I missed their bloom while I was in California. Native plants are very ephemeral. Last year I saved some of the seeds they produced but I read that it takes about 2 years for them to germinate. So today I decided to try to divide them and them came apart wonderfully well and where the tuber separated, a blood-colored sap exuded. Exactly like blood. So I spread one bunch of plants around and put one further into the sun over by the oakleaf hydrangea.

Blood root clump

The flowers are very simple and white and the leaves are succulent and a dusky green.

Triamble Winter Squash

Triamble Winter Squash

I finally cut open the large blue three-lobed winter squash called triamble that I grew in the garden last summer. It has lasted six months and its skin is as perfect as ever – no soft spots or wrinkled skin whatsoever! It probably weighed 10 pounds. I forgot to weigh it before I cut into it. Half of it I have cut into small dice that I will mix with melted butter and roast in the oven and then use for risotto. The larger half I haven’t peeled and cut up yet but only put in the refrigerator.

This and the Marina di Chioggia squash were the successful ones.  The winter luxury pie pumpkin was horrible.  The taste was bad and it didn’t keep a month.  The jarrandale and black futsu were also disappointments.  The Triamble plants only produced one squash but it was a humdinger.  I got at least 3 gigantic (15-20 pound) squash from the Marina di Chioggia.

Tomatoes and Peppers

Yellow Butterfly Weed

I forget each year how quickly tomatoes sprout and grow and how slow peppers are. I transplanted the tomatoes to larger containers (1 and 2 cup yogurt containers) before I left for California on April 10. I still haven’t transplanted the peppers — they don’t seem to have outgrown their 9-packs yet — but I will this weekend in the hopes that they will start growing. I planted some yellow butterfly weed seeds that I collected from plants in Evian, France on the shore of Lake Geneva. They had shriveled up and I was sure they were sterile and had no content – just being the hull – but they all sprouted and now I have about 40 little seedlings. My yellow butterfly weed seedlings from last year haven’t come up and I wonder whether they have survived.

I just ran across this sentence in abnatives.com:  “Like many milkweeds, plants are slow to emerge from the ground in spring.”  So we will hope that last year’s seedlings will yet appear.

Spring Planting

I’m rereading my “spring planting” post from last year:

“So here is the plan for next year. Start seeds in 9 cell plastic seed starting trays, 1 seed per cell since I can’t ever stand thinning plants and throwing one away. If the seeds are several years old, put 2 in each compartment. When they have a pair of true leaves, transplant them to cup plastic yogurt containers. When they outgrow those, transplant them to quart containers, saving the cups for next year or recycling them. “

And that is what I am doing. I started tomatoes and peppers today:  Big Mama Hybrid Roma tomato, Sun Gold Hybrid cherry tomato, Matina German tomato,  Ancho San Martin Hybrid tomato, Puripa hot chile, Zavory hot pepper (a mild habanero), Pimenton de Padron (Spanish pepper).  And also a new eggplant from Nichols called Fingerling which they say to cover with row covers to keep out the insects (undoubtedly those flea beetles that make lacework out of the leaves).  I also started some Georgia Collards and some Russian Red Kale (from 1998).  I need to plant or dump the old seeds.

On our 8 mile walk today I hope to stop by Whole Foods and pick up some lacinato kale, some peas and some okra.

Day Lilies and Oriental Lilies

For the past several weeks both the day lilies and the oriental lilies have been spectacular. The ones in the front of the house are doing especially well although I had feared that they would not get enough sun. It appears that the amount is just right for them. I planted 3-4 daylilies in the no-man’s land that is to the north of the driveway, between the mailbox and the rock garden, next to the hardy prickly pear catus (opuntia). I don’t know if the plants there look so bad because of neglect or because that is simply a bad location. Maybe there is too much of a slope down to the driveway and so it dries out. Or maybe there is too much shade because of the french lilac – which seems to be dying out at the main trunk and finally sending up either seedlings or runners. Perhaps I should put a railroad tie along the edge of the driveway so that it prevents the water from running off – if that is the problem. Or maybe I never really improved the soil there. Or maybe it is because there are too many daffodil bulbs in the ground, creating competition for all other roots. I should put a photo of the space here and then see if I can get an improved “after” shot next year.

The brugmansia, Angels Trumpet, is in bloom on the deck. The first flower opened up today and it is large yellow and fragrant. I’ll take a photo of it tomorrow. Fernando says that it is going to be his favorite plant – so I asked where he was going to put it in the winter because right now we have an awful lot of potted plants that need to be moved indoors. I don’t know where we are going to put them now that we are losing our kitchen and bedroom garden windows! Next home improvement: a greenhouse.

Summer Garden

Here it is July 21st and I haven’t posted a single thing since spring and this was supposed to be a gardening journal. Yesterday I transplanted the new guinea impatiens we had bought way back in June (if not may). They have not done well but then I really didn’t prepare the soil underneath them and they haven’t been fertilized. Plus it was a cool and rainy June, very unusual. Now we just had several hot days – perhaps almost 90 – and I have finally had to water. The vegetables are doing well. We had about 20 quarts of sugar snap peas from the vines that I had started under the plastic vinyl sheeting over the raised bed. Next time I will plant them in the ground with the vinyl sheeting since they grow too tall for the PVC pipe supports. But the vinyl tunnels are a good solution to the short growing season here. Harvest Valley farm is advertising tunnel tomatoes at the farmers’ market.

We didn’t order mulch or mushroom manure this year. I wanted to rely solely on the stuff we produce from shredding. We shredded one batch of material that I had collected since the fall. That was in early spring. Now we have a gigantic mound and are waiting until we have the energy to shred it. It does shred down to almost nothing, surprisingly. My compost bin is working fine. It is half full and takes all our organic garbage. Willy says that his is completely full and he complains that it is hard to get the compost out of it. There is just a little door at the bottom. I suggested that he get a second compost bin and use that for the fresh stuff while the first bin ages. Then he can just pull the top off the compost and start over.

My worms eat some stuff but I don’t think they can handle too much. I’m not sure that they are that productive but they are pets.

I’m trying not to buy plants this year but I am still tempted and bought way too many seeds. I have plenty of perennials to divide and transplant or weed out so we don’t quite look like a jungle and one plant is separate from the next.

The day lilies continue being a highlight of the garden and are in full bloom now.  They do very well no matter where I put them.  It is probably due to their underground tubers that let them survive dry weather when they are in the sun.  I just hope they don’t get the rust or something.  I have divided some of them and will think about dividing more this fall.

Here is a list of the vegetables that were available at the farmers market from Harvest Valley farms this weekend. This is so that I will know what to plan about two months earlier in May!
Yukon Gold Potatoes
Cucumbers
Green & Yellow Zucchini, Patty Pan Squash
Radishes
Green Onions, Sweet Onions, Red Onions
Cauliflower
Green Beans, Yellow Beans, Kentucky Wonder Beans
Sugar Snap Peas
Red Beets
Blueberries
Lettuce – Green Leaf, Red Leaf, Romaine, Green Bibb, Red Bibb, Red French Leaf
High Tunnel Tomatoes
Okra (I wasn’t able to find okra seeds in Monroeville so didn’t plant any. my roselles – also a hibiscus – are doing VERY well)
Basil and Parsley
Sweet Corn / Bi-color

Summer Reading Lists

Every newspaper publishes a summer reading list as if we had more time in the summer than the rest of the year.  I suppose that you do if you are a student or a teacher but for the rest of us it is the same old same old.  Fortunately these reading lists can be used all year:

UK Telegraph’s 50 best ever summer holiday books. 

Some of these I have actually read!  Here’s another academic one from the University of Michigan’s school of urban and regional planning.  Urban Planning Summer Reading List which includes Guns, Germs and Steel and urban sprawl selections.

National Geographic’s Travel Library breaks up books about regions by regions.

Spring Planting

This morning I transplanted my sungold hybrid tomato seedlings that I had started en masse in a larger pot. It is better to start them all in the individual plastic trays and then easily move them to larger pots. So remember for next year, which reminds me that I have pepper plants started in the individual plastic trays that should be transplanted. I need more cup yogurt containers for the next transplanting but I only eat yogurt out of quart containers. Maybe I can have Jen and Will save them for me. Or I could run around rooting through people’s garbage tomorrow night…

So here is the plan for next year.  Start seeds in 9 cell plastic seed starting trays, 1 seed per cell since I can’t ever stand thinning plants and throwing one away.  If the seeds are several years old, put 2 in each compartment.  When they have a pair of true leaves, transplant them to cup plastic yogurt containers.  When they outgrow those, transplant them to quart containers, saving the cups for next year or recycling them.  And alternative would be to start them in 6-cell trays and then transplant to quarts.  I’ll try to order or find them in bulk.  Novosel carries them.

I also transplanted an en masse planting of Georgia Collards to the garden. Some to the small coldframe, some to the plastic-covered raised bed, and some to the open raised bed. We shall compare results. I also strew some old Mexican grocery coriander seeds likewise in the three locations. It will be a wonder if they come up but I should get rid of all old seeds, one way or another. It is time to put in the lettuce as volunteer seedlings are coming up in the plastic-covered raised bed, but that will be another morning. Perhaps today it will rain, I don’t remember the forecast.