I took a little tour around the garden today. We had another round of all day rain and cool temperatures. Everything is looking soggy but the lavender has definately suffered. The rosemary is not looking much better though. It will take a month or more before I really know whether the rosemary is going to make it, but I think the lavender will be yanked out when I
get a dry day. Even the weather man is complaining – “its so cold and wet out there, you just can’t get warm”! Still we have a ‘nice warmup’ next week – 52 degrees and sunshine for all of one day.
Last year I planted the cool weather vegetables way too late. I was still in northern thinking maybe, but planting cabbage in April led to whitefly by mid May. Not a very successful year cabbage-wise. So this year I am starting just a few seeds – no I do not need 10 seeds per cell and 600 little cabbage plants vying for survival! Just one seed per cell and if it doesn’t germinate then I will sow another one. After just a few days they are up and running.Now comes the really tricky part of getting them enough light. I am tempted to sit them outside in the rain rather than leave them near this sunny window (which will not see sun today).
My seeds sitting in a sunny window
There is something about the first flower in the garden that is special. It gives just a hint of what is to come in the next few months. The crocus seem to be nowhere one day and in bloom the next. They brave dark cloudy days, deluges of early spring storms, not to mention icy mixes that occur early in the year.
Regardless they are a pleasant sight when they bloom.
The first week in the new year is something that I have always enjoyed. It is a great time to go into the garden and start planning. It seems like the latter part of the year is a wind down in the garden, but once the new year has started the planning can begin again. It starts though with getting a jump on spring color by bringing in a few branches of forsythia or other early blooming shrub to force inside. This year I have a few forsythia and some winter honeysuckle which has already come into fragrant bloom after just a day or two inside.
Tags: garden plans, winter honysuckle
Well it had to happen – a real winter finally hit the south and my almost zone 7b turned coat on me and let me know otherwise.
The problems with knowing that something is too tender for your area, is that when you see it marketed or sold in a local nursery, you give it the benefit of the doubt. You have a string of mild winters and you become convinced that this tender thing can indeed survive in your cool 7b. The we get a run of 4 days in the teens overnight.One night would be possible but 4 no way. Technically zone 7b should go down to single digits but everyone forgets that and even zone 8a should be able to do low teens, but the plants know otherwise. My tender hardy banana is looking distinctly dead from cold. Inside the circles of stem there were little ice crystals.
I was truly in denial of the zoneand probably paid for it. The good news will be that if they survive – hey they can be called ‘hardy’.
Busy start to the day – two radio shows to do, both live. At 10am we are discussing using locally available produce for season and holdiay recipes. Listen to Personal Chef Tony Carollo (http://mychefsite.com/globalchefservice) give some great recipes to try.
At 11am the largest poisettia farm in the country is the guest on The Master Gardener Hour. Paul Ecke III a 4th generation grower gives tips on poinsettias and the new Polar Bear Program – listen in at 10 and 11am on www.radiosandysprings.com or www.americaswebradio.com .
I am in England visiting my mother, and today we played in the garden. I raked leaves and put in bulbs, plus some gilliflowers aka wallflowers.
The soil is dark, but was not dark enough, so we put some compost onto the whole area to give some extra nutrients.
Had some great conversations with some nursery folk as well today as I have seen a stunning bright red hardy cyclamen – no one can give a cultivar name though.
Tomorrow is the big Fall Affair in the Garden at Barrington Hall. I have scheduled speakers and we will have an old fashioned plant swap. The talks will be on Southern Historic Landscapes and the Williams-Payne House, plus yours truly talking about the restoration of the Barrington Garden. The event starts at 10am and the plant swap is scheduled for about 12.30.
My contribution to the swap are some dark leaf elephant ears. I dug them about a week ago so that I could give the new sugar cane room to grow.
Fussy Plant and New Container with Sweat Peas
With the blast of cold air last week, my tender outdoor plants are coming inside for the winter, so my attention has turned toward container gardening for the winter. Apart from the large tropical plants, I have some sweet pea seeds and some lettuce that I think will work well in containers if I can get them sufficient light.
My plan right now is to sow the seeds and let them germinate inside, then in the mild weather that generally follows the first cold snap, I will put them out onto the sunny deck. I truly think that fresh breezes and natural rainfall are much better for plants than the sometimes stale air that is prevalent in many homes during the winter, so if they can stay outside for another week or two we will all keep our sanity.
The beauty of container gardening is that you can bring the container in when foul weather occurs and take it back outside when mild weather returns. Of course this can only be done if the container is not too large. To help move the larger containers around I want to buy one of those plastic crates on wheels and put the larger containers into that.
In general I have found that light is the biggest problem. Some areas where we have lived, the number of sunny days is depressingly low, so extra light was needed. Now that we are in the south, I hope to find a window that will give sufficient light without using plant lights. Growing sweet peas and salad greens will also help because neither of these need the 12-plus hours of direct sunshine that some plants need. Less than ideal conditions lead to weak plants which tend to be more susceptible to bug and health problems, so using plants that cope with low light and keeping everything outside as long as possible, should help me get some color and a few fresh salad greens throughout the winter months. Container gardening in winter is a challenge, but the results will be worth it.
I was wondering around the internet and found this video. I host Ameerica’s Home Grown Veggie Show, and this one is saved online. It was the show where I spoke with Baltimore City Parks Manager about the veggie that they put in the flower beds outside city hall. It also has one of the rare phone in questions from Pennsylvania:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1948462
Enjoy!!
Tags: Americas Home Grown Veggie Show, baltimore city veg garden