Changes.

Tags

iris, roses

Just updated the Black Flowers page to include the beautiful Iris chrysographes; I bought the plant last year and the blooms first opened today.

I also added a picture to the Rose page; all the roses are blooming at once (for the second time ever) and I actually got a picture of it this time. Speaking of roses, I  got another one a week ago, a beautiful purple miniature called ‘Diamond Eyes’. No picture yet though.

I splurged last Saturday and bought a pond tub – a purpose-made one, as opposed to an ordinary tub or undrained large container. It got delivered on Tuesday. I’ll admit it was a bit of an impulse buy, but I don’t regret it at all. It’s 51 x 31 x 18 inches, which is deeper than many prefabricated ponds available, and that’s always been one of the main things holding me back from getting one: most of them just aren’t very deep. In fact, I would have liked it to be even deeper, say 6 inches or more.

Good thing I was revamping the container garden anyway, because that’s the only spot left with enough space to hold the pond where it would get enough sun. I’m not burying it, for a few reasons. First, my soil is just too. damn. hard. and. too. damn. stony. to excavate something that size and then deal with the spoil. Second, the entire property is on a slope, so I’d have to get fancy with the levelling (this is actually a minor consideration). Third, although I would love to have an in-ground pond that might even possibly attract a frog or toad or two (I love amphibians, and not just for their wildlife value; I really think they’re ridiculously cute and yes I know I’m weird), the local raccoons would make an absolute wreck of it and everything in it.

So I piled up some stone (and I have a lot of stones in my soil), levelled it off, and sat the pond on top of it. The elevation, plus the height of the tub itself, should make things harder for the nasty little bastards to mess things up. While they could easily jump up, even raccoons would have a hard time balancing on the lip of the tub while digging around inside it, without falling in (which they might decide to do anyway…). As long as I don’t put anything around it, they won’t having anything to sit up on.

Also, having it a few inches off the ground should make it a little easier on the old back. Not getting any younger here. In winter I can drain it and turn it upside down. It will be interesting to see if water evaporates slower or faster from one large container than a bunch of smaller ones. It would be nice to run a little fountain in it, but it’s too far from a power outlet.

It does, however, mean I need to rethink my original idea for what to do with the container garden. And now we need some rain. Last good rain we had was over two weeks ago, and the rain barrels are nearly empty. And therefore, so is the pond.

Anyway. Yay! Pond!

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Babblings and ramblings.

That should be the title of most of my posts…

Well, the North American Native Plant Society’s plant sale at the Markham Civic Centre last Saturday was disappointing to say the least. From what I was told, the powers that be (either the Markham Civic Centre or the City of Markham, I’m not clear which) were quite obstructive this year by refusing to provide enough tables, refusing to allow ample setup times, and being unaccommodating in general. The NANPS had to drastically cut back on their offerings this year as a result. I didn’t find even half of the things I was looking for. This was my eighth year in a row going to that sale, so it’s been at that venue for at least that long, and probably more. So much for loyalty from civic officials. Typical.

Anyway, the spring frost date for my area is past now, so I’ve started planting out the hardy plants and hardening off some of the tender ones. The lettuce and arugula seedlings are well on their way now, so it’ll be time to prick them out soon; the onions and peas are well sprouted, and the carrots are just beginning to show.

My beloved next-door neighbours who are downsizing to a smaller house this year were throwing out a large stoneware jar (large as in over two feet tall and nearly as wide), so I raffed it. I almost couldn’t believe it, because I’ve rather envied it for a long time, and I also couldn’t believe that they were getting rid of it instead of taking it with them – they’ll still have a garden at their new house, and it belonged to his parents, after all. Possibly the fact that it had a crack had something to do with it, but a bit of silicone caulking and I now have a new tub pond.

I have to say, this spring has been a really good one in the garden. There’s been lots of rain and although it’s been a bit cool, it hasn’t been cold enough to set anything back. I’ve had a good display of tulips this year too – especially since the accursed rabbits haven’t bitten the flowers off this time. I think we need more hawks around here. And owls. I love owls.

All set for spring.

Tags

arugula, bloodroot, cabbages, camassia, cauliflower, cucumbers, fritillaria, gladiolus, honeysuckle, iris, lettuce, onions, peas, roses, spicebush, tomatoes, tulip, wood poppy

April showers bring May flowers! Or something like that. The last couple years we had Aprils that were relatively dry, but this year we’re finally getting a more typically wet April. I know it sounds odd to “normal” people (i.e. non-gardeners/ non-farmers) to want rain, but spring rains really are a crucial source of groundwater for plants, even well into summer. And climate change isn’t going to improve matters, at least not in these parts where even in the past ten years, summers have become noticeably drier (and possibly hotter).

Anyway, today I planted the onion sets. The peas I planted last week are probably germinating as I type. The lettuce and arugula have already started to sprout. I really need to sow the carrots soon. The brassica (‘Melissa’ Savoy cabbage and ‘Di Sicilia Violetta’ purple cauliflower), tomato (‘San Marzano’, ‘Black Krim’, ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Hahms Gelbe Topftomate’) and lemon cucumber seedlings are well on their way. In fact, I ran out of room under the grow lights, so I started hardening off the brassica seedlings today – they tolerate cool temperatures better.

The bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) started blooming last week, as did the spicebush (Lindera benzoin). I’ve had the spicebush for three years now, and this is the first time it flowered…possibly because during its first winter here, the accursed demonspawn rabbits chewed it down. So this spring I’ve learned something new about it, which is that it produces masses of tiny yellow flowers first thing in spring, before it produces leaves, and that those flowers have a very pleasant, refreshing fragrance.

Everything else is going apace – the wood poppies (Stylophorum diphyllum) are just starting to bloom, and the yellow tulips will open within a week or two. The honeysuckle (Lonicerum tataricum), which I pruned three weeks ago, is well-leafed out and now starting to produce flower buds. The roses are unwrapped, unmounded and pruned, the hardy gladiolus (Gladiolus palustris) is finally sprouting, the camassias (Camassia quamash) are up, all the irises are well on their way, and I’m nearly done with spring garden cleanup. Right now the only worry is that I don’t see any sign of my Fritillaria persica showing yet.

I know it’s a month until our spring last-chance-of frost date, but right now everything looks set to be glorious.

…I’m not generally an optimistic person, so I’ve probably just jinxed myself.

The rain of snails.

Or perhaps they’ll take over and it’ll be the reign of snails.

We had the first real rain in what must be five weeks (probably more) last night, so today I was all excited to see how full the rain barrels got. Not that much, as it turned out – less than one. And the water was filthy with several weeks’ worth of accumulated muck and dust from the roof and eavestroughs. But there were aquatic snails in the rainbarrel and I have no idea how they got there.

Now, my rainbarrels have lids with a wire mesh centre, and the water pours through the mesh to filter out twigs, leaves, shingle gravel, dead bugs, and other debris, so the horribly hot dry weather notwithstanding, the snails couldn’t have washed in. The closest tub pond is half the garden away. All I can think of is maybe back when the weather was rainy (oh sweet memory), some snail eggs got carried up to the roof on some bird’s foot, got washed in, and somehow grew to maturity in the muck at the bottom of the barrel.

Anyway, I rehoused the snails into the tub ponds, so hopefully they’ll be happier there and help keep down the algae. And hopefully I don’t get some horrible disease such as schistosomiasis from letting aquatic snails crawl over my hand. (I know, I know…)

In other news, I lifted the crown of the two conifers at the front of the house. Whatever idiot planted them thirty years ago did so only about four feet apart, and about that far from the driveway, so they were crowding each other out and leaning over the driveway. One of them was not very healthy, and I thought I’d have to get rid of both. And I hated the idea, because I really like having them – not only do they provide the only shade I have at the front, they also screen the view of the front porch from the road.

As it turned out, simply removing the bottom branches (crown lifting) solved all the problems, and I got to keep my two old friends. It was like eating my cake and having it too. It also cleared a lot of space around the bases of the trees, so it opened up a potential new planting area.

I managed to borrow a small woodchipper from a friend, so all the prunings that I can’t use as-is (branches to make stakes, for example) are slowly getting chipped down so I also have my own mulch. The garden is a valuable resource, folks – use it well.

The summer bulbs are coming into their own now – the ‘Black Star’ calla lilies (Zantedeschia cv.) that were a gift really are dark, so I’m happy with them. The ‘Verrone’s Obsidian’ dahlias are budding and I can’t wait to see what they look like. A lot of the freesias are only just sprouting, and the begonia is taking its sweet time, as are the ‘Black Walnut’ gladioli, but the hardy marsh gladiolus (Gladiolus palustris) that I got last year has flowered and done already.

The elder flowers (Sambucus canadensis) are finally open. The seriously dry weather meant the inflorescences are small and many have dropped, so it’s time to start collecting them for wine. The peas are finally coming in, and I think the last of the June-bearing strawberries are about done. Unfortunately, the horrible little cucumber beetles are back and the lemon cucumbers are already showing signs of wilt.

Spring into summer.

Tags

arugula, begonia, cabbages, calla lily, chickadee, dahlia, dill, Eastern black swallowtail, freesia, gladiolus, ismene, roses, sawflies, strawberries, tomatoes

Well. Something like that. This has been a crazy year for weather around here, fluctuating from one extreme to the next. Spring started cold, went hot, then went to normal spring temperatures. It’s getting hot again, but at least that’s normal as we approach July. What hasn’t been normal is the dry weather; I’m already out of rainwater and using the tap. They did forecast one of the hottest, driest summers ever and it seems that it’s begun.

And windy. I don’t know if it’s just me, but these past three years have felt especially windy. It was aggravating because we had some lovely masses of raincloud overhead a couple days ago, but they just got blown right by with barely a drop.

Anyway. The late spring did provide some surprises: for example, all the roses are in bloom at once. This has never happened before. It may also have messed around with some pest life cycles, because the rose sawflies (Arge sp.) aren’t are bad as last year. And the day-neutral strawberries didn’t start bearing until the same time as the June-bearing ones.

I’ve been doing a lot of container planting this year. A friend was given of a lot of large containers that she didn’t need, so she passed them along to me. Good thing too, because I’ve rather overextended myself with the vegetables this year, so now I’ve got pots of tomatoes and cabbages and salad greens and herbs all lurking to snag the unwary. Also dahlias, gladioli, freesias, calla lilies, ismene (Ismene x deflexa) and tuberous begonias – essentially, all the summer bulbs that I swore I’d never grow because they were too much trouble to dig up and overwinter properly. Of course, in pots I can just let them go dormant and stick them in the basement for winter, and they overwinter that way just fine.

Also in pots is the arugula (Eruca sativa) which has now begun to flower. This isn’t as bad as if, say, lettuce started to flower, because arugula is bitter to begin with, so the effect of bolting isn’t nearly as noticeable. But it’s a sign that summer is imminent.

The wildlife continues as well. On the one hand, I’m really pleased that the chicadees (Poecile atricapellus) have used the nest box, and I’m also happy that the Eastern Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)caterpillars have shown up on the dill (Anethum graveolens). I love raising butterflies and there’s always more dill than I can use. On the other hand, the squirrels have been even more annoying than usual, and the rabbits could do with a fox.

Bah. Too much to talk about. I think I’ll stop typing now.

You learn something new every day.

Tags

arugula, clematis, corn, cucumbers, elder, iris, radishes, roses, tomatoes, tulip

The iris ‘Hello Darkness’ opened its first bloom of the season this morning. It’s been chewed on by something since spring began, and I assumed it was slugs. This spring has been pretty dry and today we finally had a storm that’s been building for two days; the first rain in at least two weeks. After the storm I found a lot of snails on this iris.

This was a bit of a surprise, because I’ve never had a problem with snails before – the birds usually get them, so it’s the slugs I battle with. But as I was leaning in to pick them off, I noticed the flower was fragrant – which I certainly hadn’t noticed last year. It was a pleasant surprise.

The spring weather has made some unusual combinations. This spring was pretty cold before suddenly going warm, so it really has felt as though we went straight from winter to summer. The cold beginning meant that many plants and flowers were held back, and when it turned hot and everything suddenly started growing…there was no rain. The Siberian iris ‘Blue King’ has only just started budding out blooms.

In another first, the rabbits have been attacking the tulips. The little buggers just nipped the flowers off neatly and left them on the ground. Every single one of my new ‘Paul Scherer’ tulips got deadheaded prematurely. The ‘Paul Scherer’ is a new “black” tulip I planted last fall to compare to the’Queen of the Night’ tulips, which I’ve had a long time. Honestly, I’m hard pressed to find much of a difference other than the ‘Paul Scherer’ opened a day earlier. Perhaps in future seasons when they’re better established, more growth differences will become apparent, but the two varieties seem very similar in appearance.

What else…there seems to be a lot of dieback on the elder bushes (Sambucus canadensis). Winter was mild, so I doubt it’s that. I wonder if I’m seeing the effects of two dry springtimes in a row?

The western blue clematis (Clematis occidentalis) finally seems to be getting on with it. This is the third season I’ve had it, and the last couple years it didn’t seem to do much except sit there; last year there were maybe two flowers. This year it’s finally putting on some decent growth and starting to scramble up. There were three or four flowers earlier in the season.

I planted out the blue corn and the lemon cucumbers yesterday. Normally I would wait another week before planting those out, but as I said, the weather has been hot and there’s no expectation that will change. The first of the tomatoes (San Marzano) went out a few days ago; the rest (Black Krim and *ahem* Hans Gelbe Topftomate) will go in containers. I think the few radishes should be ready for picking in a week or so, and then I will sow sugar beets in that spot. I need to check if rabbits will attack arugula before planting any in the ground; right now they’re all in pots.

This Saturday is my Master Gardener group’s spring plant sale…guess who looks after the plants before the sale? Tomorrow we take the plants to the venue and set everything up. i don’t mind hosting the plants (if nothing else, it means I get first pick of anything that comes in), but it will be a relief to get it all gone.

First post of “spring”.

Tags

artichokes, ash, cabbages, calla lily, cherry, romanesco, spider plant, tulip

…and second of the year. My, how I’ve neglected this blog.

Today was relatively warm and sunny, so I took the opportunity to root-prune some of the bonsai. March is generally a good month for the job, at least for deciduous species, because the trees are still dormant and are much less traumatised by the experience than if they were in growth.

This year the ash trees (Fraxinus spp.; never got around to trying to determine the exact species) were troublesome. For whatver reason they were both really potbound, with long roots wrapping all around the pots, plus a nearly solid mass of fibrous roots. Ideally one wants to encourage a fibrous root system in bonsai, but these were really overcrowded. In one case it was somewhat understandable because the pot was too small for how large I let the tree get. I have trouble finding bonsai pots that I like that I don’t have to remortgage my house to afford, but I did manage to find one several months ago, so it’s in a bigger pot now.

I’m wondering if I overfertilised or underwatered them last year. Or maybe I did a half-assed job with last year’s root pruning. Or maybe it’s just one of those things, I dunno.

I didn’t manage to do all I wanted before the light faded, because I’ve got a couple of wild cherry saplings that I’m thinking of turning into bonsai. I can’t remember which is a wild black cherry (Prunus serotina), and which is a chokecherry (Prunus virginiana). I ID’d them last year but never got around to marking them so I could tell the difference without leaves. I’m not sure how good a bonsai they’ll make. They’re naturally small trees that prune well, so in that sense it should be easy – but they have extremely vigorous root systems and in fact at two or three years old (last year) and in one-gallon pots, they were already suckering. Possible candidates for a grove-type massed planting, which I’ve never tried. We’ll see, but that’s a job for another day.

Also began indoor vegetable seed starting early this month. This year is going to be quite an…experience…in the vegetable garden, because not only am I trying some new stuff, they’re forecasting an even drier-than-usual summer this year. Yay. I went to Florida in February and bought a few things off the seed rack, plus I got a couple things at Mississauga Seedy Saturday.

I’m trying a blue sweetcorn (and already wondering how to keep the squirrels off them), romanesco (a brassica that’s sort of like a cross between broccoli and cauliflower and looks like a green fractal conch shell), and artichokes (which may well turn out not to be hardy around here, but here goes). And this is all in addition to the usual carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cabbages, radishes, lettuce, and peas. Sucker for punishment, me. If not for succession planting and container gardening I’d need to rent space from the neighbours.

Anyway, the seeds I’ve started so far are the artichokes, some romanesco and some cabbage. I don’t usually start tomatoes until the beginning of April and cucumbers in mid-April, and I’ll start the corn at the end of April (for planting out in early June). The lettuce can be sown whenever and the radishes are already sown. I need to buy onion sets and peas. Carrots…probably end of April. Garlic got planted back in October. (Couldn’t be bothered to put in the Latin names for all those, as I usually do. This post is already too long. Deal.)

Speaking of seeds, there’s been one disappointment. My Master Gardener group did a children’s garden at a local home show event in mid-February and for one of the activities I removed about seventy plantlets (I hate calling them pups) from my giant spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum) planter to root up. To my surprise I also found seed pods, so I sowed a few seeds. They sprouted, but unfortunately none of the seedlings produced chlorophyll and stayed white. No pigmentation, no food; no food, seedlings die. Sigh. The wonders of genetics.

And finally, the calla lilies (Zantedeschia  ‘Schwartzwalder’) and dahlia (Dahlia ‘Karma Chocolate’) that were overwintering in the basement have sprouted, so they came up into the light. The tulips outside began sprouting early this month – this past winter was rather odd, being generally mild with occasional harsh spells. This spring has also been up and down so far.

Hurrah for pointless rambling posts.

January blues.

Tags

jasmine, Lachenalia, marjoram, roses, whitefly

Well, it’s just under a month since the winter solstice and the days are getting a bit longer at last. Most of the houseplants are coping, some better than others. The only winter casualty so far is the marjoram plant; I’d managed to keep it going for three years straight, but I think this time I missed watering it. Mediterranean herbs generally need less water, and many plants in winter need less water, but my experience with marjoram (this and ones I had before) is that it’s a bit of a water hog.

I did some risky business with seeds today. Back in…November, I think…I ordered some seeds from Europe. Nothing special. Except when I browsed the company’s offerings, I saw a couple listings for blue roses and black roses, along with accompanying pictures of beautiful flowers. I thought, “Huh, that’s interesting…looks like a crock.” Neither blue or black roses exist in nature, and horticulturists aren’t likely to breed any; the genes for those colours simply don’t exist in the Rosa genus.

Oh, they’ve got things they call blue roses, which are all some shade of mauve. On the whole, true blue flowers are relatively uncommon, so the horticultural industry likes to call mauve flowers blue and expects you to believe a dog is a cat because they say so. And true black flowers don’t exist in nature either. So the possibilities are: 1. these aren’t roses at all; 2. they are roses, but not quite the colours in the pictures; and 3. these are real and direct genetic manipulation of roses in horticulture has gotten further than I’d realised.

So what did I do? I ordered 10 seeds of each (they weren’t expensive), and today I sowed 5 each. It’s far too early to be doing this, of course; I shouldn’t be sowing seeds indoors for another month (six weeks would be smarter), but it should be okay (I hope). The seeds do resemble rose seeds in a general way, but according to the germination instructions on the website they don’t need a cold period; this supports the ‘fake’ theory. Roses grown from seed take three growing seasons to bloom, so I’ve got a wait ahead of me. You could call these a test run; I’ll sow the remaining seeds in spring.

I did order from the company, however, a true blue flower, or rather a true turquoise, which is even rarer in the flower world. Lachenalia viridiflora is a bulb native to South Africa and endemic to a small area. This makes it “rare” and unfortunately getting rarer because of habitat degradation. Fortunately the plant seems to be easy to grow in cultivation. Because, you know, I’m in dire need of more houseplants. These also take a few years to bloom.

That’s mostly it for now. I’m probably jinxing myself by saying this, but I might have halted the whitefly cycle on the jasmine (Jasminum sambac) plants this year; usually the infestation shows up in mid-January. This is probably because the whitefly showed up a month ago, and because of the unseasonably mild December we had it was easy to take them outside and give them two damn good sprayings a few days apart. It’s usually vexing to do that indoors: you have to put the plants in the bath or shower to spray them to avoid making a sticky mess elsewhere in the house.

I’ll end this post on a sad topic. A member of my Master Gardener group passed away on January 3rd. He was 98 and a half years old, and still sharp as a rose thorn up to the end. The only thing that stopped him from gardening was a fractured hip at age 97. We’ll really miss him.

El azafrán.

Tags

crocus, saffron

Or saffron, in English. I like the Spanish word better. It sounds more impressive.

Saffron (Crocus sativus) is a species of fall-blooming crocus. I bought a few corms at the end of summer, but waited longer than I ought have to plant them. They’re borderline hardy around here, so I planted them in pots so I could bring them under protection when the really cold weather sets in. Given how late I planted them I’ve been really lucky that this fall has been unusually mild so far. The note that the vendor (a local herb centre) sent said that corms planted this year wouldn’t flower until next year. Actually, one just flowered.

I’ve been very cagey about them and passing them off to anyone who asks as ordinary fall-blooming crocuses. It is the most expensive spice in the world, after all, and interestingly, the only temperate-climate member of the commercial spices (at least, those commonly known to most Westerners). Black pepper, nutmeg and mace, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, turmeric, cardamom, vanilla – those are all tropical or subtropical plants.

… but the real reason is that I tried growing it before and failed, so I didn’t want to look a fool if didn’t work out this time either. I’m experimenting as usual; some are in garden compost, some are in leafmould, and a couple are in store-bought topsoil. Since this year’s growth comes from last year’s corms, I probably won’t notice any major differences (if any) until next year.

The spice itself consists of the stigmas of the flower (the female part that gathers the pollen). Probably the main reason why it is the most expensive spice is that harvesting and processing it is very delicate and labour-intensive: nobody has worked out a good way to mechanise the process and so it all has to be done by hand. The flowers need to be picked at a certain stage, and then the stigmas are removed, dried, and stored in a moisture-free environment.

In this case, the bud emerged yesterday (nearly a month later than if I’d planted them on time). It’s a pity the flower needs to be picked – they’re quite pretty, really.

The best time to harvest is considered in the morning just before the bud opens, so I picked it today. Morning wasn’t going to happen in my case, but yesterday and today were pretty damp and cloudy, so it didn’t open fully (as far as I know).

When I brought it inside, the warmth encouraged it to open a bit more in the short time it took to fetch a kitchen cloth and put it on the table.

The flower is opened by removing or pulling back the tepals. The stigmas are the three long red slender structures; the yellow things are the pollen-bearing anthers. Even this one flower smelled incredibly good, better than dried saffron because it also had the aroma of honey. The fragrance stayed on my fingers for hours afterward.

Here with the stigmas removed. You can see that it’s a tripartite structure extending from a single yellow style at the bottom; the style is not considered useful and is discarded. The anthers are usually discarded as well, but I’ve read that they are kept and somehow used in Spain.

In Italian commercial saffron farming, the stigmas are gently dried over a charcoal fire before being stored; studies have shown that this preserves more of the biochemical components (read: results in higher quality product) than, say, drying in an electric oven. However, I wasn’t about to start a charcoal fire just to dry three strands of saffron (…do I even have charcoal…?), so I just laid them on a piece of aluminium foil and held it over the stove. Now they’re in a jar waiting for who knows what, because there’s not much one can do with just three strands…

The garden in autumn.

Tags

cucumbers, dahlia, fritillaria, garlic, jasmine, strawberries, tomatoes, tulip

Gosh. I hadn’t realised that I’d neglected this blog for so long. The garden’s certainly been busy enough, but as I expected, it’s all too easy for me to fall out of the habit of posting.

Well, let’s see…the ‘Music’ garlic got planted about three weeks ago. I was really pleased with the results of the one head I got last year, so this year I got six heads. A couple days ago I planted some new black tulips; this time it’s ‘Paul Scherer’ and it will be interesting to compare it to the ‘Queen of the Night’ tulips I already have. Rounding out the black flower collection, I planted one Fritillaria persica as well.

Pretty much all the tropicals and tender plants are indoors by now, except the dahlia ‘Karma Chocolate’. Although there have been a couple of frosty nights already, it seems quite happy on the front patio, which is fairly sheltered. When it finally does die down, I’ll just cut off the dead foliage and move the whole pot into the basement. I gave the three potted jasmines (Jasminum sambac) a really hard pruning and when I brought them in; they’ll readapt better to indoor conditions that way and hopefully it meant I got the entirety of the plants when I sprayed for whitefly afterwards.

There’s so much more I could write about, but that’s it for now. Fall pruning and cleanup is the ongoing job at the moment: the tomato and cucumber plants are already gone and it’s too chilly to expect much more out of the ‘Albion’ strawberries.