Spring has finally arrived

 

In my last post, I was crowing about the Darwin tulips that recovered after the big freeze.  Sadly, they were beaten nearly to death a few days later by a hail storm.

That's a quarter on the ground to show the size of the hailstones.  The force with which they came down is evidenced in this picture of bare garden ground...

Luckily, due to the delayed warm weather, I hadn't gotten any tender seedlings in the ground.  Until today, they were all either in the cellar in my growth chamber:

Or outdoors in my makeshift cold frame which I placed a hard cover over during the hail storm...

A few days ago I planted a long row of peas, and today I planted some seedling flowers, as well as seedling kohlrabi and wasabi.

The straw paths are not nearly as pretty as mulch paths, but they also don't wash away during hard rains or dribble out into the planting areas like the mulch does.  And if it does get into the planting areas, it only serves to add organic matter that doesn't interfere with planting.

Little by little I've been hoeing out weeds and turning the soil, which is rich and lovely after 10 years of gardening.

My son and daughter-in-law gave me this great gift for Christmas, and today was the first day I used it.  I had looked at these before and thought it might be a pain to move them around, so I've always just used knee pads.  This is not at all a pain to move around, and it makes getting up off my knees a snap by offering leverage.  Also, knee pads always slip around and soon start irritating from crunching the straps in the folds of the backs of my knees.  The ends of this gadget fold down to make it easy to store, and it can turn over and be a bench, as well.  It's going on my favorite tools page (link in the menu at the top).

But, what's in bloom?  Spring bulbs, creeping phlox, and these lovely pasque flowers (Pulsatilla vulgaris).

'Purple Dream' tulip

'Arkle' yellow daffodil, 'Purple Dream' tulip and orange 'Shogun' tulips

White 'Mount Hood' and pink(ish)/white 'Pink Charm' daffodils

'Pink Charm'  (They start out dark orange red and fade to pink.)

'Pink Charm', yellow 'Arkle', and purple scilla (Chionodoxa luciliae)

'Cassata'

'Altruist'

clockwise from top left:

'Mount Hood', 'Cassata', 'Orangery', 'Pink Charm'

Wascally Wabbits

The cabbages that survived the rabbit attack are growing back.  I wonder if they've escaped attacks by the early cabbage worm moths.  We'll find out.  I planted marigolds amongst them to see if that was a deterrent to the moths, but that experiment has now been nullified, since, if they have escaped, I won't know if it's the late start or the marigolds that worked.

The lettuce has outrun the rabbits, but I'm paying for letting them run free in the garden.  Turns out, there are three large rabbits (at least), and they knocked my peas way back.  I was so looking forward to a great pea harvest.  

 I don't know if they have time to recover before it gets too hot for them.

See if you can find two culprits in this picture:

In a fine example of closing the barn door after the horse is gone, I've been spraying the pea stubbles with Liquid Fence deer and rabbit repellant. 

I ran out of Ortho Deer-b-Gone, and the Liquid Fence product was the only thing available when I needed to buy something.

Lowe's website has the skinny on Liquid Fence:

Putrescent whole egg solids and it's unscented???   

Believe me, this is wrong.  Deer-b-Gone has added cloves and cinnamon to its product, which is also primarily putrescent whole egg solids, that make the smell of it tolerable to the human olfactory sense, but Liquid Fence doesn't bother with such amenities.  It smells exactly like putrescent egg solids.

(Other  Liquid Fence ingredients are: garlic, sodium lauryl sulfate, potassium sorbate, thyme oil, sodium benzoate, citric acid, and xanthum gum.)

So do I.  And I thought you said it was unscented.

There's another contradiction in the information as well:

But...

If the duration of effectiveness is less than a day, why do you apply it only once a week? 

The beets are just little stumps that the rabbits left, but they don't eat the carrots or arugula.  Of course, the beets are sweet.  Hopefully the clover in the yard has grown up large enough to keep them out of the garden, in combination with the "unscented" Liquid Fence.

carrots and arugula

The arugula is reaching the maturity stagevwhere it's not as tender as I like it.  I sheared it off to see if it's easier to pick new leaves - if in fact it produces new leaves.  I haven't tried that before, and if it doesn't work out, I'll have to pull what's there and reseed.  It certainly spoils the ornamental function of the ornamental vegetable garden.

I used the clippings to mulch the two new rhubarb plants I put in this year. 

'Canada Red' rhubarb

Last year I finally broke down and bought a red-stemmed variety (which all of the ones I grew from seed were supposed to be) that I could see actually had red stems ('Canada Red').  It was so hot and dry that it died.  This year, the weather has been cool (and wet), so I'm hoping I can keep these alive with extra attention.  I had no idea rhubarb would be so touchy about getting established because they don't seem to have any problem when I divide them.  I suppose it's probably due to the fact that the ones I bought had been living in a protected greenhouse.

Seems like overnight the lettuce has been growing distorted.  Many of the leaves are cupping and curling.

I thought this was probably caused by some insect pest, and when I unfurled one of the celtuce leaves, I found this guy.

However, after unfurling a dozen more leaves, I didn't find any other insect.  Researching the matter online, at the Wisconsin Russell Lab, I found that the insect I found was a bean leaf beetle, and not something I think would be creating the damage, but simply taking advantage of it for shelter.

I haven't found bean leaf beetles on anything in the past, but there is very close cropland that's sown in soybeans every other year.  Last year it was in corn, however, and no alfalfa was nearby, so I don't know where this guy has been all winter.

At any rate, I'm quite certain that beetle didn't cause the damage, and although I have a microscope, I didn't bother ito nvestigate further, because the new grapes I planted this year on the opposite end of the garden have had cupped leaves ever since it leafed out.

Other causes of leaf cupping, according to the information I found, include physiological factors caused by ... too much water.  I think that's probably the culprit, because we have certainly had too much water this spring.  It's been difficult just finding dry enough times to get things planted.  I'll keep a watch on the plants to see if they straighten out.  Assuming, of course, that it doesn't keep raining torrents.

The lettuce is still perfectly edible.  It tastes great.

The onions have sprouted up and are now readily visible.  Well, they were until I mulched the bed with grass clippings.

 Onions

I was very happy to see them, because the ground was so wet when I planted the seeds, and the weather cool enough, that I thought they might just rot, which is what happened to the cucumber seeds. 

Thankfully, I had also started some cucumbers indoors, so I had plants to set out under my wagon wheel. 

I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do for composted garden soil when my compost pile is gone.  It's about a quarter of the size it was when I started the garden five years ago.  It consists of all the grass and top couple of inches of soil from the plot where the garden is situated, plus plant matter and compostable kitchen garbage in the intervening years.  Last year, I pulled all the Egyptian walking (bunch type) onions from the garden and threw them on the pile. They happily put down roots.

I've planted my extra melon starts there. 

This year, I bought crimson clover seed from Outside Pride, which I'm going to use as a cover crop.  The idea is that I can turn it under to act as green manure and substitute compost.  The reason I chose clover is that it has the added benefit of "fixing" nitrogen in the soil (like all legumes do), making the nitrogen readily available to other plants.  I don't know how this is going to work out, but I already planted it in a plot where only a few zinnia seeds germinated. If it works out well, I'll plant it everywhere a crop comes out in the fall.

Here's a little money-saving tip that I hit upon last week:  Peony rings and U-shaped plant supports are quite expensive; $10 - $20 each.  I have six peonies that I've been debating with myself about whether to put out that much money to support, or just  keep letting the flower stalks fall.  Then I realized I had three useless store-bought tomato cages that looked a lot like something that could support a peony.  They certainly don't support tomatoes - much too small.  I took wire cutters and cut them vertically so that the bottom ring and legs were separated from the top two rings.  That gave me one taller, and larger, piece, and one a bit shorter.  Then I cut those in half through the rings, giving me six supports that I could spread open  to whatever diameter I needed to support the front and sides of each peony, like a U-shaped support.

Those cages cost $3 or $4 each, as I recall.  You can buy them in several colors, as well as the plain galvanized ones, so the green ones would be perfect.  You just have to be careful not to poke yourself on the cut ends.  And you have to have access to a wire cutter.  If not, you could just use them as they come before the plants grow too large to place the rings around them and still save a fair bit of money.

Till next time.

Bees in the chives

Spring is going to arrive after all

We've come through a winter like the ones I remember as a child: frigid temps and lots of snow.  I haven't seen one of those since I came back to Missouri in 2013 and started gardening.  But I haven't ever seen a long, hot summer like we had in 2018, and I hope I never do again.  But who knows?

In January, we had a doozey of a snow - about 14" that piled on the bird feeders, tilting them to 45 degree angles, and covered everything in sight.

Following that, we had a heavy ice storm that took out a couple of very large tree limbs, shattering the small terminal branches into bits within a couple feet of the living room window and providing lots of pecking and hiding fun for all kinds of birds until the weather let up so a tree crew could come cut it up and shred it into a big mulch pile.  (Does that qualify as a run-on sentence?)  I assume the birds were finding insects, but I don't know.

Every blade of grass got its own coat.

The bird feeders' lids were frozen shut, so I had to just scatter seed on the ice-coated ground.  A little birdie skating rink and cafe.

The mesh cover on the arbor turned into an inverted bed of nails.

Still, we have been more fortunate than others around us in this record-setting late winter weather.

One good thing about the late winter: the rhubarb didn't try to come up early.  So maybe I'll get by without having to cover it to protect against early spring freezes.  Maybe.

Rhubarb emerging - mid March

I started so many new flowers this year that I had to add another strip light to my growing-on bed in the cellar.  I also encased it in metal screening to prevent last year's disappointment: a mouse garden.  They probably thought they hit the jackpot with green seedlings in the middle of winter.  It's crowded and not as easy to work with, but I get to enjoy the rewards of my labor.

Seeded trays on heat mats

 Seeded and labeled trays

top row: ornamental strawberry; globe amaranth;  middle row: dianthus, yarrow

bottom row: zinnia, cabbage, dianthus, cardoon, tithonia (Mexican sunflower)

Don't ask me why I have such a compulsion to keep records, but I do.  Perhaps it's from my days of research at UC Davis.  It does come in handy when I wonder when to expect my seedlings to germinate, or if I should give up on them.  But mostly it's for curiosity's sake.  And it gives me an idea of what to be watching for in the spring that might have come up and needs attention.  (As if I don't watch EVERYthing like a hawk as soon as the weather stops dipping into freezing territory.)

I have a complex set of records in an Open Office spreadsheet file that includes all my plot layouts, my seed starts, and a record of rain, seedling emergence, flowering and even bird sightings.

The weather finally turned toward spring-like so I could set up my portable greenhouse, but the very next day we had winds of 25 - 35 mph all day long.  I thought for certain they would rip the aluminum and plastic thing out of the ground, but after last year's experience, I  managed to batten it down securely enough that it held.  

I'm afraid my ornamental vegetable garden is taking a back seat to my expanding rose and flower gardens.  So expect to see as much or more of pretty flowers as you do vegetables.  There's a list in the sidebar index (labels) on the right hand side of the page, so you can find specific plants you might be interested in rather than have to wade through a bunch of things you're not.

It all started with the roses.  I planned to buy one hybrid tea rose per year, keep it in a pot on the patio until fall, then plant it in the garden.  I planned for a total of five over five years.  Hahahahahahaha.  It's been three, and after moving two shrubs out of that plot that turned out to be more rambling than upright and replacing them with FOUR new varieties, there are  twice that many in the rose garden.  There's no space for  more. (This year I also added a climber on the garden arbor and two ramblers, thanks to a generous birthday gift from my sister, on the yard bank near the highway.)

It's only fitting.  The name of this farm is "Rose Hill".  I assume at one time a hundred years or so back, there were roses.  I'm going to try to air layer most of them so I'll always have at least two of each in case I lose one.  I've not had any luck trying to root them, so I'm hoping I'll have better luck this way.  And then what will I do with them if I do have good luck?  Prepare another plot, but boy, do I dread that chore again.

I order my roses from Palatine Roses in Canada, and they send beautifully healthy bare root plants in March.  This year,  from them and other nurseries, I ended up with seven roses, a lily, Siberian iris, and echinacea that I couldn't plant, because the GROUND WAS STILL FROZEN and the top 2 - 6" was positively saturated from snow melt and rain until just a few days ago.

The ground was so wet that I put on my wellies and walked the vegetable garden paths that will eventually get mulched, sinking in enough to make troughs.  I won't have to do any digging out of the soil this year to keep the mulch in its place!

The bulbs, roots and tubers I ordered can keep until the ground is suitable for planting.  (I did manage to get the Siberian iris in the ground today.)  But I had to heel in the roses, and to do that, I had to have soil, not bog.  The day before they were to arrive, knowing it was going to rain again the next day, I took large plastic sheets and tarped my giant compost hill, so that when the roses arrived, I could find a dry enough spot to bury them.

 Two days following that, I was able to dig holes in the rose garden, amending them with dry - well, drier - composted manure, and given three sunny days, I was able to finally able to plant them.

I also planted two muscat grapes at the garden arbor, and potted up a 'Pink Lemonade' blueberry, all of which I got from Stark Brothers.  I had potted up the grape vines until I could get them into the ground, but I had too many roses to do that with them.

I'm slowly taking over more and more of the wildflower garden next to my rose garden to plant perennials and cut flowers.  Don't worry.  The wildflower garden is huge.  I say slowly, because it is a bear of a job to dig out 20-year-old echinacea, monarda, rudbeckia, and the like.  Not to mention the fescue and other grasses that are taking over.

Perennial bed in progress

I finally got smart last year. When I raked up leaves for this year's mulch, I chopped them up with the lawnmower before bagging them.  Works very well.

Thanks to a generous Christmas gift from my son, I got some nice manual hedge clippers that work very nicely, and I used them to chop back the lavender, tarragon, oregano, perovskia and mound fescue.  Soooo much easier than using hand clippers!

Tabor Tools hedge shears

Check out my tools page (always linked at the top of the site) for other equipment I can't live without.

This is actually one of my favorite times of the year, seeing the new growth after a long winter, and knowing that my favorite perennials I grew from seed survived.

Lupine

Belladonna Delphinium

So, we're off!  Another year.  I wonder how this one will go.

Don't forget to let me know about your gardening adventures.  Comments to the posts are always welcome.  Unlike most blogs, this particular design for some reason has the comment link at the top of each post instead of the bottom, and coding has become so much more complicated than when I used to do it that I can't find where to change it.

Be well, and enjoy the signs of spring.