Cold Climate Gardening

1. Oriental and asiatic. And species. Every form & color (except not the lollipop ones that look like little stop signs.)
2. Out here no-till means mega herbicide and slit seeding; not for me. I hand till the raised beds when I set them up and then renovate occasionally. Anyone telling you ‘Nature doesn’t till’, though, hasn’t gotten outside much: think gophers, wind, water erosion, coyote dens, wood frogs. . .
3. Gloves. 16 hour days in the garden aren’t for the faint hearted.
4. Tchotchkes–what a nice word–not for me, except maybe chimes if they are muted.
5. Clay would be nice. I’m gardening on several hundred feet of glacial sand & silt.
6. Antique roses! Hardier, easier, and fragrant. Tea roses are basically tender perennials here, and who wants to deal with black spot?
7. Single and double. For me it is color shade first, then petal count.
8. Grey and glaucous. I’m the greedy-pig in the garden, I’d like a scoop of each.
9. Ditto with the daylilies. I’ve got both flava and fulva Kwanso, the striped one; couldn’t choose between them.
10. Double. Anything that looks that rosy!
11. Calendula. The tagetes usually look like they have obsessive-compulsive disorder.
12. Thuja.
13. Half-by-half hardware cloth & planks.
14. Mums. Here’s the link for Morden Arboretum (sort of bare bones).
15. Wouldn’t they be nice? I’ve got a 15-gallon horse water pan converted to a deer drinking pool and if this weather keeps up I’ll be getting a kiddie wading pool for the fawns and myself.
16. Both blues, silly. And gentian.
17. Boston butter! And miners’.
18. Scarlet runners! For the hb’s, and filet beans for me.
19. Pink. Haven’t quite figured out how to do orange yet.
20. Formal; at the wood’s edge, I can’t compete with Nature. This is the main reason I have never attempted a ‘rock garden’.
21. Informal. I like the lushness of cottagey disorder.
22. Lace-cap. The dappled woodsy effect is rather Japanese.
23. In bloom; in the winter there’s the snow blotting out the garden effect.
24. Neither. Not into torture. Quick & painless or not at all.
25. Whenever I can steal a moment; but morning is my traditional time. Sort of like running a rosary–going over the new treasures the day has brought.

Popularity: 2% [?]