More Waiting

We're in a rainy, cool period now, so there's not much to do in the garden but check the rain gauge and look at things that are pretty much just sitting there waiting for some sun.  I don't blame them.  Who wants to get out of bed when it's dark and damp?

I did get a chance last week to transplant some more flowers: 22 mixed and 'Blue Beard' dahlias, and 9 blacks.  I've got so many dahlia seedlings started at various times, that it seems I'll never be through transplanting.  And now, I have just recently germinated over 50 red cosmos seedlings that I intend to put in the wildflower garden.  But who knows where they'll all end up?

I wanted some red, yellow and orange bell peppers this year, but I didn't want to buy packs of seeds that I'd waste most of, nor potted plants that cost three or four dollars each, so I bought a three-pack of the various colored bells at the produce department in the local Wal-Mart, ate the peppers and planted the seeds directly into starter seed trays.  I didn't know if they'd come up, so I stuffed up to a half-dozen seeds in each plug for insurance. (I don't think they're called "plugs" - cubicles?)

Now I'll have to separate them into single plugs each before their roots get so entertwined it's impossible to do.  Normally, I would wait until they have at least two true leaves, but I don't think I can afford to with them this packed.

 The peas I planted the first week of March are blossoming.

The lettuces (also planted the first week of March) are gaining and big enough to harvest.  The second flush (first week of April) of plantings in amongst them are just starting to leaf out.

Baker Creek Seeds 'Rocky Top' mix

The Chinese cabbages are gorgeous.  They need to be further thinned, but I can't bring myself to do it yet.  They look so pretty.

I'm going to have to bite the bullet soon.  

I would have expected the 'Early Jersey Wakefield' cabbages to have grown larger by now.  The marigolds I interplanted are outstripping them.

The golden zucchini and the cucumbers have germinated and are sitting with their cotyledons flattened out waiting for some sun's energy to produce true leaves.  I'll eventually cull the zucchini to two plants, and the cucumbers back to something manageble from the two dozen that have come up.

Golden Zucchini

The Egyptian walking onions, having never died back, are already producing their flower heads, which will eventually become the bulbs that create new plants when they fall over and drop on the ground.

So much for the vegetables.

I couldn't pass up this lovely little thing I saw at Grandaddy's:  Nemesia 'Sunsatia - Blood Orange'.
It's an annual, but supposed to seed itself.  We shall see.  I may not see any more of them after this year, and I may be cursing myself for having to pick them out of wherever the seeds have blown to.  Or just leave them have their way.

I planted the Nemesia in the rose garden, along with a rose bush I also got there, one of the Eleganzas, since my 'Pink Enchantment' Eleganza was such a success.  This one is red: 'Grand Amore'.

The Allium flower evolution is fascinating to watch.  The wine-colored flowers are dropping, leaving swollen green bisected tripartate ovaries in their place.

That 'Red Crimson' Dianthus that I wasn't sure at first was a Dianthus is blooming.  The way the flower stalks stick up high over the rest of the foliage is ungainly, but the stems with their dark red nodes are interesting.

The Superbells® (Calibrachoa) and Lobelia I potted up are bright and happy despite the current overcast gloom.

I've also got my eye on a killdeer nest.  Every year since I've been here there are exactly four camouflaged eggs laid together in a little pocket of gravel, fortunately not in the driveway, but still at some risk.  I always put up a couple of steel bars where I think they'll warn any drivers of various farming equipment to avoid crushing them, and then I cross my fingers.  I don't know if it's been the same parents each year (I suspect it is), but when you approach the nest, mama (or papa?) killdeer will trot around to get your attention and then head off to lure you away.  I'm going to have to do some research into the killdeer habits and life cycle.

We're all waiting for the sun.

Planting Fever

The weather and the soil have been perfect, so I've been getting lots of planting done the last few days.

Since I expanded my gardening this year from the ornamental vegetable garden to include a rose garden and a cut flower (mostly dahlias) garden, I've had lots to keep me hustling.  I've also been adding to the wildflower garden so that it doesn't completely revert back to grass and weeds, and within that, a big bed of poppies that I can't wait to see in bloom.  The wildflowers (and grass) are tall enough now that the paths I cut with a string timmer are showing up distinctly.

horse-shoe poppy plot in the wildflower garden

Yesterday, I planted 31 (!)  'Blue Monday' Salvia plugs (that I grew from seed) in the back of the rose garden.  If they mature well, that could make a beautiful backdrop.  It may be too crowded by the end of the season, as literature says it grows to 12" wide, and I planted them about 6" apart.  Will that make them bloom more because they're stressed and want to make seed before they die, or will that make the bloom less satisfactory?  We shall see.

Here's what I hope:  I hope it blooms profusely and drops seed that will sprout and grow next year, since it's an annual and I don't want to take up the space and time starting it indoors and transplanting again.  But if it's as pretty as the pictures I've seen of it, I'll do what I have to.  The only problem with that strategy is I won't know whether it's going to self-seed satisfactorily until it's rather late in the game to start indoors.

Then I put 16 mixed color dahlias (also grown from seed) in the currently L-shaped cut flower bed, along with 6 butterfly milkweed plants at the end, hoping for Monarch visits.  The black dahlias are a great deal larger than the new transplants, as they germinated quickly and grew rapidly.

Finally there were enough weed-free grass clippings for me to put down a light mulch over the lettuce, tatsoi, arugula, cabbages and carrots.  It keeps the soil from drying out so fast in the sun and keeps the rain from splattering mud on the plants.  It also adds organic matter to the soil as it breaks down, and shades the ground if you need it to stay a little cooler.  Theoretically, it will help to keep down weeds, but the clippings I'm able to obtain probably have enough grass and weed seed in them as to cancel out that advantage.

grass mulched beds

Since the red veined sorrel (Rumex sanguineus) I planted the first week of March never germinated, I was glad I'd started some indoors.  Those went out this morning.  The first I became aware of this plant two years ago, Lakewood Gardens was selling it with their herbs.  They weren't carrying it last year, but I found some at Granddaddy's Garden where they were selling it as an ornamental for the pretty foliage.  It's a member of the dock family (in fact, it's also known as bloody dock), so you can view it as a weed, an ornamental or a salad green.  I see it as an ornamental salad green.  It will develop dark green oblong leaves with deep red veins and what's described as a tart flavor.  Since I only ever had one plant at a time, I used the leaves sparingly and don't recall it as particularly tart.  But, when you consider that lettuce is rather tasteless, perhaps.  However, it isn't something as strikingly strong as arugula, nor bitter like some leafy greens. Maybe if you let it get more mature, but, like my lettuce, I prefer tender baby leaves.

Red veined sorrel seedlings

A couple of days ago, I put out about 30 zinnia seedlings that will be a center row between two rows of onions.  The outer row of onions is about three inches tall now, and soon I'll plant the inner row.

After a rain.  left row: Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage (interplanted with marigolds);

right row: Zinnias and onions

further right: 'Improved Maestro' peas - with Egyptian walking onions (Allium x proliferum) behind

The beautiful mixed lettuces will be ready any time now for picking as baby leaves, which, as I said, is just the way I like them.

The cover over the window well makes a great place for seedling trays, slanting them toward the sun and backing them up with a reflective white wall.

  

Here I should mention that Wal-Mart has a bin for recycling the trays that hold the plastic 4- and 6-packs and the plastic 4" pots of vegetables and flowers, and they let you take them if you need them.  And this year, I bought some sheets of the packs and some tray liners from Morgan County Seed Company for the incredibly low price of $0.60 for a sheet of the 4- and 6-packs and $0.80 for a tray liner (and I think for a tray, as well).  (One sheet contains either eight 4-packs or ten 6-packs.) Holy moly, what a bargain!  When I started my seeds in February, I ordered some 6-packs from Amazon at a cost of $0.31 per 6-pack.  I didn't look at the price of the 4" pots at Morgan County, but they are no doubt comparable.  I reuse all plastic potting material until I've given it away with plants or it falls apart.  I do wash them between uses, and if I think there may have been any disease organisms, I either toss the container or bleach it.

Sometimes with an order of seeds, I'll get a free packet of something (probably something they can't sell).  Last year, one such offer was something that was labeled as 'Red Crimson' Dianthus.  When I looked up that variety on line, it looks like a pretty dark red carnation with a pink center.  Mine has beautiful lush foliage, and even though I was expecting some red flowers, that's all it ever was all season last year.  It survived the winter, and this is what it's doing now:

I was beginning to think it wasn't even Dianthus, but Googling "carnation with hair-like petals" led me to something called a Turkish carnation.  That was also called Dianthus barbatus, and that is apparently Sweet William.  

The Missouri Botanical Garden site says it's "a  short-lived perennial that is perhaps best grown as a biennial. [...]  Seed may be planted directly in the garden in late spring for bloom the following year."  That would explain the fact that there were no flowers last year.

  

Here's a picture of a pink colored Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) from Cool Garden.

I don't know what those spikey bits are called.  They're not petals, and they're not sepals (the small green petal-like parts that make a cup for the petals).  Perhaps they're what's called bracts, which are actually modified leaves.*  At any rate, I'll be watching for some flowers amongst those spines, and assuming they'll be crimson red.

This  last picture shows what is turning into my favorite flower bed.  Alliums blooming now, oriental lilies and stargazers for summer, early spring hyacinths, a Julia Child rose, and a ground cover of ornamental thyme.  Today I dug up the weed infested and otherwise barren ground around it and planted grass seed.  It deserves it.

Happy gardening!

*Okay, I couldn't leave you that way.  I looked it up.  They are indeed bracts.  And, you probably already know, but those lovely red poinsettia petals are not petals at all, but bracts.  The flowers of a poinsettia are clustered in that funky little yellow center.

Till next time.

Planting Days Are Here Again

The weather has been all you could want for spring gardening lately.

I am so obsessed, I go out sometimes two or three times a day just to peer at the ground to see if there are any signs of newly germinated seeds.  And while I'm there, I pluck a few newly germinated weeds.  I'm trying to be better about thinning what needs to be thinned this year, and I'm getting there with my Chinese cabbage plot.  It could use a little more thinning, but by the time they're this big, it's really hard for me to make myself take any out.

The peas are coming along nicely, with the exception of the ones the deer grazed down.  Fortunately, they didn't eat too many, but I didn't plant a lot this year, so I hate to have somebody eat them before I get to harvest.

The deer did leave at least something growing on the peas they clipped, so maybe they'll move on to more tender treats and let those alone now.

They have also clipped off a number of other things, including a couple of my dahlia plants.  I've got a calendar schedule now to spray Deer-B-Gone every third evening for a while.  So far, they've clipped a tulip tree sapling, dahlias, peas, burning bush, all the flower buds off the little magnolia.  Although it hasn't happened yet this year, they've been known to clip my roses, so I've got them on the schedule, too.

Today, I planted 'Marketmore' cucumbers and Golden Zucchini.  I planted the zucchini inside a tomato cage, which is something I read about but haven't done before.  I'm feeling slightly skeptical.  I put the cucumbers underneath the same trellis I had last year.  We had too much rain for them last year, and the vines rotted.  Hopefully that will not be the case again.

Slowly but surely my little seedlings are coming along.

Still not big enough to transplant, and most of them are flowers that I decided to grow this year, and three kinds of basil.  The tomatoes are about three inches tall and smelling wonderful as tomato plants do. Only a few are still in the cellar, along with a few that I'm beginning to think are not going to germinate.  Most are big enough to stay outdoors day and night now in an area that's somewhat shaded so they don't cook.

This is what the garden looks like now:

That's some very health volunteer cilantro in the foreground, left.  All my cilantro is volunteer, by the way.  And I get plenty of it.  You only have to plant it once and let some go to seed.  Oregano and chives are just beyond the cilantro (center front).  And the chickweed is taking over the world outside the garden.

It's a couple of weeks now before I will plant the last of my garden seeds: okra, lima beans, beets, and maybe cowpeas.  So I'll spend that time scrutinizing the ground where the tiny little carrots, celery and salad greens are coming up, watching for onions and nasturtiums to break the surface, and watching the poppies and hostas take off.

My poppy field is loaded.  Can't wait to see them in bloom.

Poppy seedlings galore.  See the nice little deer tracks cruising through?

I'm not a sweet potato vine fan, but I saw this bi-colored one yesterday and couldn't resist.  It didn't have a label, and it was the only one (at the wonderful Dutch Bakery in Tipton, Missouri), but I believe it's 'Sweet Caroline Sweetheart Red'.  

I also picked up some flowers to go in pots and a sweet little basil I hadn't seen before that was labeled 'Tasty Purple'.  

It has very small leaves, and I probably won't cook with it, but it smells good and certainly looks pretty in my big pot with the other herbs.

That pot will probably never look better than it does right now.

Among the beautiful blooming things that are making me happy are the dogwood:

Bleeding heart, Dicentra formosa 'Luxuriant'...

And 'Sparkling Sapphire' Baptisia that I purchased a couple of days ago from Helmi's Gardens in Columbia, Missouri...

Brilliant.

The gooseberry bush is loaded with flowers.  I hope they get fertilized!

And, I hope you're enjoying the spring color as much as I am.

Behold! The Sun!

What a fabulous couple of days we've had.  Perfect (if a little windy) for getting some things in the garden.

First, though, the chickweed has taken over!  It's especially thick at the garden edges, and when I pulled several inches of it away from the west end, there were at least a half dozen grubs per handful.  No wonder the moles make tunnels all around the edge of my garden.  (Which would be okay if they didn't feel the need to cross through.)

bird feed

I went ahead and set my little cabbages in the ground, along with a few marigold seedlings and some nasturtium seeds.  Hopefully, the strong-smelling flowers will either repel or confuse cabbage worm moths.

I also got a long row of little onion bulbs in the ground.  Hopefully it won't rain quite as much as it did last year, when I lost over 3/4 of my onions to rot.

cabbages and onions planted and watered, peas coming up, Egyptian walking onions going crazy

I planted a lot of cabbages hoping to get at least a few decent heads out of it, because I didn't have much luck with them last year - my first year growing cabbage.  Most of them didn't form good heads.  I don't know why, but they were in a fairly shady place, so I've put them out further into the sunny area this year.  Maybe that will help.  And maybe that wasn't the problem at all!

I had direct seeded the Chinese cabbage before the freezing week we had as I read you shouldn't try to transplant them.  I hadn't read that last year, and so that's exactly what I did do.  They started out gangbusters but didn't form heads well either.  This year, I've got a lot of thinning to do now, and these little snippers I got that aren't good for much else work like a charm for thinning.

My little rhubarb plants are looking suspiciously like the ones I started last fall and gave up on.  They just don't seem to want to grow, although their roots are long enough to be forming along the inside edges of the 4" pots they're in.  I saw a video about growing rhubarb where the guy said that given more soil space, rhubarb seedlings will grow much bigger and faster.  I went ahead and put a few in the ground, and later I'll "pot up" the others, even though they aren't root bound, to see if that's the case with mine.  The guys in the ground look awfully small, especially next to the three-year old plants that have been growing there.  Those little stems are nice and red, though.  I hope they stay that way when they're full grown.

Even though I covered the (green-stemmed) established rhubarb plants on the worst nights during that freezing cold week last month, they still suffered some damage, and I had to remove a lot of stems.  They don't look so good right now, but I expect they'll recover without much problem.

The black dahlias I've been growing from seed were starting to get root bound, and since the sun is supposed to be out for a while now, I think the ground is warm enough to put them out.  But, what do I know?  Nothing about dahlias.  I previously turned under some grass and wildflowers in an area adjacent to my rose garden and added some composted manure and humus (purchased in a bag).  Digging into it to plant the dahlias today was a joy.  There's lots of decaying oganic matter and the soil is loose and rich. One thing for sure, whatever else might be a problem for my new dahlia bed, compacted soil won't be.

I'm disappointed that the mixed dahlia seeds I started at the same time as the black dahlias didn't germinate.  That was one of those Amazon seed purchases that you never know about.  But so was the black dahlia seed.  I got some more mixed seed from another seller, and they've germinated without problem, but they're only just putting out true leaves.  Hopefully they'll pick up and catch up once they're big enough to go into the ground, so that the black dahlia blooms won't be all spent by the time the mixed ones come on.

And...that bleeding heart that was buried underneath dogwood and cypress leaves early in the spring...it looks great.  It even has tiny little flower buds on it.

The nameless kitty approves.

Lazy man's herb garden - right by the kitchen door

curly parsley, pineapple sage, patchouli, oregano, rosemary, lemon thyme

(waiting for basil seedlings to get large enough - and then try to take over)

A Few Notes

Nobody wants to do much growing during these cloudy, often rainy, cool days, but finally, I see some celery seedlings poking their heads up, as well as the carrots.

Other things that never died back during the warm winter, such as the tarragon, walking onions, rhubarb and dianthus, are managing without the sun.

Red Crimson Dianthus

Volunteer poppies and Tarragon

The peas are slowly coming along.

I keep watching for some signs of growth on the rosemary and lavender plants that were in the garden all winter, but nothing's happening.  I haven't entirely given up on them, but I'm thinking that I'll eventually have to.  The recommendation for winter mulching on certain plants is not to do it before the ground has frozen.  This allows the plant to have made its own transition to a dormant state and stay there.  If the ground freezes and thaws, the plant may suffer more damage.  Here's how an online article at The Spruce puts it:

A steady temperature will keep the plant in dormancy and prevent it from triggering new growth during a brief warm spell. Tender, new growth too soon will just result in more winter die back. Mulching now will also help conserve whatever water is in the soil, so hopefully, you’ve been keeping your garden beds watered right up until the hard frost.

Our winter weather was totally crazy this year. It was rather dry, and I don't think the ground ever froze, but what probably did happen was that plants that would normally harden off and go dormant for the winter never managed to do it, and I think that's why I lost a beautiful 'Pink Enchantment' rose, a crepe myrtle sapling, and probably the rosemary and lavender when the temperatures dived.  If mulching would have prevented these deaths, which I'm not convinced it would have, I really wouldn't have known when to do it.

Other things seemed to not be affected at all, while still others, such as the hyacinths, performed very differently from previous years.  Last year, I had hyacinth blooms for two weeks: the last week in March, and the first week in April. I didn't record the bloom period for the previous year, but my recollection is that it was about the same. This year, they started blooming in early February, and there are still a few just now fading!  The early warmth and late cool weather has prolonged their bloom time considerably.  I'm not complaining in that regard, but so many other things have suffered.

The sun is forecast to come out in a couple of days, and then the temperature is supposed to drop to near freezing in the early hours of Friday morning.  This is crazy.

In the meantime, if you're a Lepidoptera fan, here's a great Flickr site that matches butterfly and moth larvae (in the case of the genus Lepidoptera, commonly called caterpillars) to their adult forms:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/itchydogimages/sets/72157677190448311

And, here's a picture of one of my favorite spring denizens that thankfully seems to be unaffected by the temperatures as long as it doesn't get a hard freeze after the buds open:

Good luck, gardeners!