Black pansies.

Tags

pansy

I love growing plants from seed. When I see my seedlings growing, I get such a charge out it that’s hard to explain. I love growing things from cuttings too. The charge I get out of that is slightly different; I can’t really articulate it. Really, both are little miracles of life.

The garden industy depends on taking cuttings of various types to propagate identical cultivars for commercial sale. Seeds, on the other hand, are variable.

I’m rambling about this because I got a case in point example of seed variability within the commercial garden industry this year. I got seeds of an heirloom variety of pansy called ‘Black King’. As the name implies, the flowers are supposed to be very dark purple, almost black. I didn’t need a whole lot of plants, so I only sowed a few seeds; I now have five plants in bloom.

Interestingly, the bloom on the plants are slightly different. Most looks exactly as described: an incredibly deep, rich, velvety purple with a yellow eye. But there’s one that’s a lighter purple, which a white picotee (a white edge on the petals) and a paler underside, and it’s beautiful in its own right. And there’s one that really is almost black; in all my time hunting down black flowers, I’ve never found one that’s such a deep matte black.

Now this is something I really want to preserve by cuttings.

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My first snapdragon ever.

Tags

nicotiana, pansy, snapdragon

I’m not big on most annuals, especially bright, garish bedding plants, so I never tried growing snapdragons (Antirrhinum cv.) before. Actually, it might be a tender perennial, but I’d need to check up on that. In either case, it’s functionally an annual here. However, earlier this year when I was doing a seed order, there was a snapdragon called ‘Black Prince’ with dark red flowers and very dark foliage, so I thought what the heck.

I didn’t get good germination with the first sowing and there’s only one plant survived from it. I had better luck with a second sowing, but the plant from the first batch flowered several days ago. It’s not dark enough to warrant going on the Black Flowers page, and it never had any pretensions of being a black flower, but it’s still beautiful. Despite also being rather tiny, it still needed to be staked up because of the f**king winds we’ve had this year…and the past four years, it seems.

This one, and eventually the ones from the second sowing, is in a planter box. I usually grow heliotropes in there, but never got around to getting any this year. Some nicotiana ‘Chocolate Smoke’ is popping up in the planter, though, so it will be interesting to see what sort of combination they make. I have a feeling the nicotiana will probably swamp the snapdragons, though.

Snapdragon ‘Black Prince’

However, I did update the Black Flowers page with my new pansy, ‘Black King’. I got the seeds from the same source, and oddly enough, it flowered at around the same time as the snapdragon. I sowed them at the same time, but I guess pansies just take longer to get to that point, despite usually being spring flowers.

The longest day.

Tags

bladderwort, dragonfly, water, waterlily

Well, this summer solstice I spent four and a half hours in the garden and it was wonderful. I took care of several of the little tasks that keep getting put off, plus a couple major ones.

One of those major tasks was filling and stocking the new large tub pond. We actually had a bit of rain last night; wish it were more, but beggars can’t be choosers. But it was enough to fill a couple of the rainbarrels, so I had enough water to start filling the pond. This in turn meant I could take the plants out of the smaller tub ponds and containers scattered about the place and rehome them.

…I seriously never realised how many water plants I have. I must be crazy.

I got a lovely surprise from one of the tubs, however. Well, actually, it was rather an ugly surprise, but it was nice. This tub had only a miniature water lily (Nymphaea cv.) in it, plus a bit of bladderwort (Utricularia gibba) to control the mosquitoes. It’s only about fourteen inches deep. When I raked my fingers through the muck that had accumulated at the bottom, I got the shock of the day to find a dragonfly larva. I went and got a sieve and ended up finding five larvae (plus one dead). I have no idea what the critters were feeding on – dragonfly larvae are carnivorous and prey on other aquatic insects, crustaceans, tadpoles, and even small fish.

Anyway, I rehoused them in the big tub, and when the water in the smaller tubs settles, I’ll add it as well – it will contain all the pelagic fauna that makes a balanced pond ecosystem and helps control algae, the pondkeeper’s nightmare. When most of the water is out, I’ll have a hunt for more benthic fauna.

I also found NO mosquito larvae. People look skeptical when I tell them that since starting to keep these pond tubs, I actually get bitten by mosquitoes less. The fact is that yes, standing water attracts mosquitoes, but it also attracts dragonflies, especially with vegetation around. A dragonfly can eat over fifty mosquitoes in a day, plus other meals, and dragonflies have an estimated 95% success rate at hunting. This makes them one of the best predators in the world. And happily, at least one dragonfly has claimed my garden as its territory.

I think I’ll get a board or something and balance it on one corner of the big tub (it’s rectangular) and put a few of the carnivorous plants on it. It would help complete the look, as many carnivorous plants are bog species.

So you could say I spent a summer day splashing about in water. How nice.

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!

No rest for the wicked.

Tags

cabbage white, mandevilla, roses, sawflies

Why does it feel as if I have so much to do this spring? I didn’t buy and start that many plants, did I?

…oh wait, I did. Right.

I think I’m about two-thirds done with the planting out and potting up. Space is tight this spring. Really tight. I’m revamping part of the container garden, so things have to be done in stages…when actually everything needs to be done yesterday. After my whole life gardening, it’s still a surprise when suddenly everything seems to grow overnight.

Soon I’ll need to cage around the strawberry patch to keep the rabbits and squirrels (hate them all) and birds (like them a lot, but I’d still rather eat the strawberries myself) out. I also had dreams of planting all the brassicas in one spot and fleecing the whole thing over to keep out the accursed demonspawn cabbage white (Pieris rapae) butterflies, but it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen.

We’ve had a nice, wet spring, and I mean it when I say I’m glad of it. But, and I should have seen this coming, it already means that the roses are starting to show black spot. Not only that, but the rose sawflies (Arge sp.) are out in force. I swear, they get worse every year.

And to top things off, I just got a mandevilla (Mandevilla cv.) dumped on me. It’s actually a rather nice one, but I wish my bloody relatives wouldn’t assume that just because I’m a mad, obsessed gardener, I’m happy to have any old rubbish in my garden.

I wish this whole post didn’t look so negative, because it’s actually been a really great spring in the garden. It just feels that it’s been too busy to enjoy it.

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.

Spring is in the air.

Tags

butterwort, chickadee, dahlia, hellebore, jasmine, robin, sparrow

Well, the days have begun to warm up, so maybe we’ll have a decent spring this year. It would be slightly early, but not remarkably so. The American robins (Turdus migratorius) are out in force, along with the ubiquitous sparrows (Spizella spp.) and black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus).

My black hellebore (Helleborus ‘Winter Dreams Black’), which was overwintering in the garage, began flowering weeks ago. It’s glorious now. The tulips are sprouting and it will soon be time to start end-of-winter pruning on the honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) and the roses. And the neighbour’s wisteria.

Speaking of pruning, we’ve had a run of mild sunny days, so yesterday I root pruned the bonsai (argh, why are bonsai pots so expensive?). I also potted up one dahlia (‘Karma Chocolate’) crown that had just started to bud out, but left it in the garage, hoping that the lower temperature would slow it down a bit. Now I have to hope the shock won’t kill it…

And today I was wandering through the gardening section of my local predatory department store (the only one left around here now that all the other chains have come and gone). I wasn’t looking FOR anything, mind you, just looking, because I’m a compulsive gardener. They had sticky strips for catching indoor flying houseplant pests – specifically, fungus gnats, aphids, thrips, and whitefly. I don’t have a terrible problem with fungus gnats, haven’t had indoor aphids in a long time, and I’ve never had thrips at all, but the jasmines (Jasminum sambac) always get whitefly in late winter no matter what I do to them.

The butterworts (Pinguicula agnata) do a reasonable job catching whitefly – they’re often covered in whitefly, and I mean that in a good way. But they never catch all, so I decided to try these sticky strips (made in Sweden). They actually work – in just a couple hours they were already catching things. Interestingly, they might not be based on a pheromonal attractant – the box only mentions the bright yellow colour as the attractant. Experimentation might be in order.

Soon be time to start seeds. Leaf out.

Why, plants, why?

Tags

calla lily, hellebore, lotus, waterlily

They do it to me every year. Containerised (potted) plants that I bring into the garage or the basement in late autumn/early winter for overwintering…start sprouting in February. That is, now.

Sigh. It’s still too cold to realistically put them outside and there’s no space left in the house where they’d get enough light to thrive. So every year I invariably end up with a front hall full of leggy plants.

I say it’s too cold, but right now it’s practically tropical for February in these parts. Despite forecasts of a more “normal” winter a few months ago, this winter has been another mild one for the books. There were a few colder spells, but overall it’s been mild. The temperature is forecast to drop again in several days, but still to above-average temperatures for the end of February.

So right now the ‘Black Star’ calla lily (Zantedeschia ‘Black Star’) is sprouting, as are one of the lotuses (Nelumbo cv.) and a water lily (Nymphaea cv.)…all things that need lots of sun, and in the case of the water lily, a pain in the arse to keep alive indoors. It’s a good thing I checked them, which I only did because I expect this to happen (and hope it doesn’t). That’s what I get for listening to long-term weather forecasts – if I’d overwintered them in the garage (not the calla lily), they’d probably have stayed dormant longer, but I wasn’t sure they’d survive the colder temperatures that were predicted. At least the dahlia tubers and other calla lily tubers (wrapped up in newspaper) haven’t started sprouting too. Yet.

Also, the hellebore ‘Winter Dreams Black’ started sprouting with a vengeance, but hellebores like cold weather, so I put that outside. Hopefully that will slow it down, but at least I know it will survive. You might be wondering why on earth I’m growing a hellebore in a pot – well, the shady spots in my garden that hellebores prefer not only have completely unsuitable soil (hard clay), but are not places I could easily enjoy the flowers at the end of winter/beginning of spring, when hellebores bloom.

You love your plants, you look after them, you do your best for them – and this is how they repay you. By growing.

Winter houseplants 7: a special case with the watering

Tags

orchid

I’ll touch on one special houseplant category: orchids, specifically tropical epiphytic orchids – which most cultivated houseplant orchids are. Frequently these will start to grow roots extending into the air and people are not sure what to do about them. The answer is: leave them be and DO NOT CUT THEM OFF. These plants normally grow clinging to trees in the rainforest. They gather water and nutrients from rain running or dripping down the sides of the trunks and branches, or directly from the humidity of the air. Those roots growing out the pot are how it naturally goes about its business. It’s the pot that’s the aberration here.

If your orchid does this, then it will appreciate an unusual form of watering in the form of a daily misting of the roots. Those roots are usually a sort-of-white to sort-of-brown colour with dull green tips; when they’ve been misted the tips will turn a brighter green for a while. Spray the roots until water starts to bead and drip off or trickle down them. This simulates how the plant gathers water naturally. Ideally you would spray with rainwater or soft, dechlorinated tap water if you have either; don’t use softened water because the softening salts can damage the plant. Distilled water, sometimes with a drop (and I mean a drop) of orchid fertiliser added, will also work. This doesn’t eliminate the need for other watering (I prefer top, but I’m sure there are many who would disagree), but it does reduce it. It could be a bit messy, though.

And for the love of dog, don’t water orchids with ice cubes.

Autumn chores (for real this time)

Tags

blue jay, calla lily, dahlia, ginger, ismene, lemon grass, pitcher plant, turmeric, winter rye

Right, well, it’s been almost a month since my last post and I haven’t really done much in the garden since then. October turned ridiculously busy for me after the first week and I haven’t had time to do as much gardening as I would have liked until yesterday. We had a nice warm spell in the middle of October and I was stuck indoors working instead of outside gardening. Bah. So now I’m catching up and this is a long post.

Anyway, at the beginning of October there was a somewhat cold snap, followed by the aforementioned warm spell. It really extended the garden season by a couple weeks – it even seemed to trick a few things into thinking it was spring again. My white trumpet pitcher (Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Tarnok’) suddenly sprouted a flower bud. Since the plant is only four or five years old, I didn’t even think it was mature enough to flower. I did bring it into the house, hoping the bud would continue to develop and open, but it doesn’t look hopeful. But it was weird.

Also, one of the lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus) pots sprouted a peanut after I brought it inside early in October. By that I mean I found something in the Fabaceae family sprouting in the pot and assumed it was something else – then I pulled it out and it was a peanut plant. Bloody squirrels. I put the seedling in its own pot just to see what will happen. I suspect it will need full sun to do well, but it really isn’t a priority as far as the window space goes.

Yesterday I pulled out the tomato and eggplant plants and finally made a start on organising the garage to hold the potted things that will be overwintered inside it. The pots of turmeric (Cucurmis longa) and ginger (Zingiber officinalis) came in last week. I’ve stopped watering them and when the top growth dries up I will harvest the rhizomes. I will do the same to the ismene (Ismene festalis) and calla lilies  (Zantedeschia cvs.) soon – the calla lilies are slightly more tolerant of cool weather.

Oddly enough, at least one of the three potted dahlias is still going strong. I could just dig them up and cut all the growth off, but letting dahlias get hit by a light frost sends the plants a clear signal to pack it in for the year. Trying to force them into dormancy sometimes has…unwanted results when you least expect them.

Anyway, most of the things that will come indoors are indoors now. All that’s left are the things that will go into in the garage, and the weather is still mild enough that most of the hardy things are still alive. The biggest single job plant-wise now will be to take the aquatic plants out of the tub ponds, bag them up, then empty the tubs and stow everything. I also need to empty the rainbarrels and bring them in, and bring the worm bin from the garage into the house. Later I need to mound and burlap the roses, and finish wrapping the vine arbour with chicken wire so the [insert curse words of choice here] rabbits don’t chew down the new grape vine. Again.

I had wanted to try winter rye (Secale cereale) as a cover crop on the vegetable bed this year. Unfortunately, because I was only able to get around to clearing the vegetable bed out yesterday, I doubt there’s enough time and warmth for the rye to sprout and grow. I’ll try it anyway, but I’m not optimistic (not that I ever am).

Let’s see…oh, one more pointless addition to this already-rambling post. I wonder if it was the unusally hot, dry summer, but the blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) were different this year too. There’s a family of blue jays that passes through here at the end of every summer; they usually stick around for a couple weeks and then push off. I’m not terribly fond of blue jays – they’re noisy (they don’t even sing, they just squawk), they’re greedy and they tend to chase off the other birds. This year they turned up about two weeks early and stuck around for a month. It’s enough to make one think about investing in a slingshot.