Cold Climate Gardening

The Pasque flower is blooming now and so silky furry that I can’t resist petting it when I go by. The huge purple blooms are full of golden stamens and very showy, but it is really the fuzz that attracts me. It reminds me of other furry plants: Clematis’ seed heads; the mullein growing around the barns that I use as bandages in a pinch as the leaves are not only thick & soft like blankets but stick together when wound around your finger; pussy willows of course; and some of the hardiest species tulips like T. biflora, whose papery tunics are furry inside. As I would want mine to be. I have read somewhere that fuzziness …

Popularity: 1% [?]

Today it got up to 84°F, perfect for working in the garden, but a little warmer than I like to see it at this time of year for the plants’ sakes. (But not to worry, it will only hit 60 tomorrow, and snow the day after that.) Anyway, the hardest thing about spring clean-up chores is trying to decide what to do first, because, inevitably, not everything that should get done will get done. I began with something that was just plain bugging me: the remains of last year’s blue flax (Linum perenne) was obscuring the view of the Siberian squills (Scilla siberica) just coming into bloom. So I got out my slim Japanese scissors and trimmed back all the woody stems of the flax. Now the fresh growth of the flax foliage just coming on complements the squills, a little scene of beauty amongst last year’s wreckage. In other words, one tiny place I can rest my eyes without feeling guilty.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Judy, do you keep your rosemary in a pot throughout the summer, or do you plant it in the ground and dig it up for winter? Either way, when do you start hardening it off? How do you go about it, i.e., how long do you put it out the first day, the second, and so on, and where, shade, sun, etc., and how many days do you stretch the process out over? I usuallly wait till May to start bringing it outside, but it is almost 80 today, although, of course, we are to have a “wintry mix” by Thursday, but it did make me wonder what your schedule is. And I finally figured out where in the house …

Popularity: 1% [?]

Jake from Dutchess County, NY emailed me with this question: “Do any of you Wise Gardeners use shredded paper in your compost pile? I keep reading that if I buy a simple $35 shredder I can turn my (mostly b&w) office and junk mail paper into good carbon compost. Sounds too good to be true.” Aside from an occasional tea bag tag, I don’t put paper in my compost pile, so I can’t answer from experience. If anyone reading this has used paper in their compost pile, please answer Jake in the Comments section.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Mom can tell you the Latin name of almost any plant there is, but my knowledge of Latin names is still awful spotty. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between common names and Latin names. I was rather shocked to find out that “Balsam” was a common name for “Impatiens.” (For one thing, I hadn’t even realized there was any connection between the two!) I’ve come to expect that most common names are more along the lines of “Busy Lizzies,” with English words instead of seemingly unrelated words. That was another great surprise to me–the huge difference between Busy Lizzies and Balsam.

My education on the wide variety of plants that are grouped into a genus began when I started …

Popularity: 2% [?]

I’ve looked up Honeycrisp apple in the Nafex archives and found I remembered correctly that it is well thought of by the Nafex folks who do go first for flavor & garden worthiness. They compared it to Macintosh for flavor. There was not much mention of Morello Cherries except that they have great flavor and will do well against a north wall (!) and that the ‘Evans’ cherry is a Morello descendant and highly popular in the Canadian prairies. DNA Gardens in Canada list them and lots of other interesting fruits–I have emailed them to see if they ship to the US–bulletins when they happen.
Applesource is a good way to ‘test drive’ apples …

Popularity: 2% [?]

The weather has been perfect lately if you are a duck or a goose (or me!): rainy, cool, soft. Perfect for transplanting roses which are seedlings no longer, for digging new holes for fruit trees, and for digging herbs to propagate. Every night or early morning I wake to the sound of rain, a blessing for last year was a tough hot dry one and I got nothing woody dug. The roses are a tangle but they will be wonderful around the orchard garden. The violets and primroses are starting off—today there are 3 colors of violets, 5 of Drumstick primroses, and the ‘Quaker’s Bonnet’ double primrose is starting to open, looking very much like an …

Popularity: 2% [?]