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.

Autumn chores.

Tags

butterfly pea, cabbages, garlic, jasmine, lemon, pomegranate, tulip

Well, the first week of October is almost over and autumn garden chores are in full swing. Yesterday I planted the ‘Music’ garlic and today I planted some tulips.

…I really need to stop buying new types of black tulips. I just don’t have room for more. This new one is ‘Black Parrot’; like other parrot types it has ruffled petals and large flowers.

Yesterday I also harvested the only head of Savoy cabbage ‘Melissa’ left; that’s the last of those seeds, so next year I’ll try something different.

I’ve also started reacclimatising the indoor plants. Some of them don’t seem to care, but the ‘Meyer’ lemon, for example, will shriek and faint (i.e. drop all its leaves) if I just bring it into the house suddenly. The jasmines (Jasminum sambac) will take a hard pruning and then a damn good spray of insecticidal soap – I’ve never managed to bring them through winter free of whitefly, but this helps.

I’m undecided if I should let my dwarf pomegranate (Punica granatum ‘Nana’) go dormant for winter, or keep it as a houseplant. It did marvelously well this year and even set fruit (which the motherhating squirrels stole). Other types of pomegranate do need a winter dormancy, but this one doesn’t seem to. On the other hand, it would be much easier to let it go dormant and keep it in the basement rather than finding space for it with the other houseplants…

What else…oh yes, I chopped back the butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea). It’s two years/three seasons old now and managed to pull through both winters fairly well, although last winter it got some red spider mite. It was also rather overgrown, so I pruned it back quite hard – I have no idea how this plant will respond (rejuvenate), but even if it doesn’t make it through, well, I have more seeds and I’ll have learned something.

Bladderwort blossom

Tags

bladderwort

One of the carnivorous plants I keep is the floating aquatic Utricularia gibba. It’s pretty ubiquitous as carnivorous plants go – it occurs naturally on six continents. I think a lot of aquarium keepers despise it as a pernicious weed, but it’s because of its unkillable nature I like it in my tub ponds. To me, aquatic bladderworts are the answer to mosquito control in small water features (at least, ones with plants in them but no fish or fountain).

It’s also suitable for small water features because of its small habit. I can’t speak for the aquariumists (aquarists? -dunno what they call themselves), but if it gets too thickly overgrown, I find it quite easy just to pull the clumps out and toss them on the flowerbeds, leaving behind enough to keep the colony going.

The only problem I have with it is that it inevitably gets strewn with filamentous algae (a.k.a. string algae) growing through it. In small water features, filamentous algae is pretty simple to get rid of – you just have to twirl a stick through it like a fork in spaghetti, and it comes out. When it grows through the bladderwort, however, it’s impossible to get rid of one without losing the other.

Anyway. Utricularia flowers are surprisingly pretty. In fact, most genera of carnivorous plants have attractive flowers. This might be considered somewhat ironic, but on the other hand, these plants are very good at attracting insects, after all. I never got my U. gibba to flower – until now. And it did so under what I consider quite unlikely circumstances.

Utricularia gibba flower

This “specimen” is in a soup bowl that got chipped so nobody wanted to eat from it anymore. I tend to repurpose all sorts of junk into the garden, so in early summer I just dropped some U. gibba into it…and of course some spores of algae came along with it despite my best efforts at picking it out, and somehow some duckweed (Lemna sp.) too. I put the bowl in a part-shade corner and generally neglected it except to add water when I remembered. It basically looks like a bowlful of green muck/slime. Except today I noticed this little gem of a flower sticking out.

I’m not sure what triggered flowering – growing in a shallow container? Part shade? Being left undisturbed all season? Dunno. I’m just really glad it happened. Most species of Utricularia need cross-pollination, though, so I doubt I’ll get any seed from it, unfortunately.