Cold Climate Gardening

This is eleven-year-old Evan with one of the two pumpkins he grew this year. Of all my children, Evan showed a botanical aptitude the earliest, learning the names of flowers as a toddler and impressing my garden buddies when he came along to visit their gardens. At the moment he’s more of a vegetable man, but he’s been helping me plant my recent colchicum acquisitions.

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First, some more plants in lawns: tansy, yarrow, prickly lettuce and a green flowered knotweed. Also, in Peterson’s Field Guide to Wildflowers, pigweed and lamb’s quarters are interchangeable common names. That’s the joy of common names. The scientific name is Chenopodium album.

We’re still having a slow year. Usually the leaves are well on their way to coloring up, but only a few have any color, and I think that may be due to them being stressed in some way. Perhaps the extra amount of rain has kept the trees green longer.

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This is a photo of my Forsythia ‘Meadowlark’ blooming–sparsely, I grant you, but nevertheless blooming–in September. If I hadn’t been checking for signs of the colchicums recently planted in this area, I’m sure I never would have noticed the yellow blossoms, so it is entirely possible this shrub has done this other years without my being aware of it. On the other hand, dinner table consensus was that it had bloomed pretty poorly this spring, so maybe these were flower buds that didn’t “get it” this past spring. Worse, these could be next year’s flowers jumping the gun, in which case there may well …

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Colchicum ‘Autumn Herald’ finally made an appearance, kind of late to be a herald, but a relief to me. Only one blossom so far–perhaps it’s not thriving? Or perhaps I’m too impatient. After all, this first blossom has scarcely colored up yet. The first of the transplanted ‘Lilac Wonder’s is blooming, and doesn’t look floppy like it did in its former location, so now I’m wondering if it flopped because it didn’t get enough sun. But it’s not a leaf or a stem, so does it even have the potential to lean towards the sun? Beats me. Wait and see, Kathy, wait and see. It’s only one of ten bulbs, after all.

The first two flowers of all the bulbs …

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I got this in 1997 for about twice what Russell Stafford is selling it for this year. I hope that means stocks worldwide are increasing, because everyone should have some of these beauties around. Two words in the Odyssey Bulb catalog description don’t apply to mine: “pink-tinged” and “October.” I have never seen even a hint of pink in mine, and it’s obviously blooming in September for me. I originally had a ‘Purple Mound’ aster blooming here as well, but that has disappeared. When it was there, I remember being frustrated at how infrequently the two bloomed together, so maybe it has bloomed in October for …

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I actually purchased this from Odyssey Bulbs in 2002. It bloomed nicely that fall, and if I remember correctly, the leaves came up in spring. But after that, it was no more. Since I planted that first one, I’ve come to realize two things. The first is that the ell of the house, where I planted my original Colchicum ‘Zephyr,’ is not the place it used to be. In terms of climate, it probably still is the most protected spot I have to plant things near the house. But it gets a lot more traffic than it used to ever since we set up a rain barrel there, …

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Check out theHerbaceous Perennials Database created by Allison Mayer, a grad student at Cornell. The site documents data collected from the test plots at Blue Grass Lane maintained by Cornell students and staff, and “focuses mostly on lesser-known or recently introduced perennial cultivars and their performance in Ithaca’s Zone 5.” Lots of photographs to help you pick something new and different for next year’s garden. (Though if you find it locally, you may be able to plant it this fall.) Update: The link is finally there, for those of you who clicked on it and got nowhere.

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