Cold Climate Gardening

Due to the prolonged January thaw I find that I am actually in the snowdrop race, limping along in last place. These are growing in the same spot as the blooming snowdrops of the previous post. This photo was taken January 12th. Since then, the cold has returned and we’ve even gotten a little snow, so I expect my snowdrops will go into suspended animation for a month or more, before finally blooming in late February or early March.

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In my sitemeter stats I found this blog linking to mine. I know there are translation utilities available, but I don’t even know what language this is. Can anyone help me out here? I’d like to contact the author and add his/her blog to my directory. I suspect the author knows English, but I can’t even figure out an email link. My guess is that it is some northern language, maybe Scandinavian, maybe Icelandic. Anyway, there are many beautiful photographs of plants at this blog that you can enjoy without even knowing the language. Beauty speaks its own language, no?
Update: Narcissa and I have corresponded by email and she is now entered in the Garden Blog Directory. In response …

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So we got this new (meaning, we’ve never gotten this one before, the company’s actually 9 years old) seed catalog in the mail the other day, and I’ve been elected to post about it. They’re called Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and you can find them on the internet here. They’re all about rare, organic, old, vegetable seeds. They do have some flowers, but nothing that rare as far as flowers are concerned, nor a very large selection. As far as the vegetables are concerned, though, it was certainly an eye-opener on the diversity within a species!

The first clue that there was going to be some really out of the ordinary stuff in this catalog was in the cucumber section. Now, almost everyone has seen the lemon cukes by now, but they also had pictures for “Mexican Sour Gherkin”, which looks just like a miniature watermelon, and Hmong Red and Chinese Yellow, as well as Poona Cheera which looks sort of like a mix between a sweet potato and a cucumber. In the cucumber section was also where I first noticed the quotes they were putting in (in this case, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius–and a lot of courage–to move in the opposite direction.” –Albert Einstein”).

At this point, it was impossible not to start making comparisons between them and Fedco.

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As I’m beginning to get started on my seed order this year, I remember that I meant to post on potatoes. Last year, due to the fascinating varieties offered by Fedco, I ordered my potatoes from them instead of Johnny’s. Most of you probably know that Fedco is divided into several distinct branches; the seeds ship from Fedco Seeds, the potatoes from Moose Tubers. Well, much to my disappointment, I am not nearly so happy with the potatoes as I have been with my seeds from Fedco, and will be ordering my potatoes from Johnny’s this year (last year prices were almost exactly the same, and I trust they haven’t changed).

I don’t recall ever getting a less than perfect …

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Old Roses has won the snowdrop race, but IBOY made a fine showing. Me? I won’t even start looking for snowdrops till February, but I’ll be lucky to find any before March. And what about the Southerners? How far south can one go and still grow snowdrops?

These snowdrops were blooming in the Secret Garden last year on March 28th. (If you want to learn a little more about them, you can read this essay which I wrote a few years ago, and maybe search this site for snowdrops using the Search box in the sidebar on the right.) Just as there are people who go ga-ga over the latest daylily or hosta, there are galanthophiles out there. (Galanthus is the snowdrop genus.) The February 2003 issue of Horticulture had a good article with photos of several cultivars (pp. 64-68) and the February 2002 issue of The Gardener (which is no longer published, unfortunately) has a black-and-white glossary of inner petal patterns. And while it wouldn’t surprise me if Martha Stewart Living had a similar article, I’m not aware of it. Lacking those magazines (or the ambition to unearth them from storage), browse through this British woman’s collection.
If the possibility of minute variations in snowdrops excites you, you should really write to Hitch Lyman, the proprietor of the Temple Nursery, at Box 591, Trumansburg, NY 14886 and request his $3 catalog. I wrote last year in early April, which was when my snowdrops were still blooming, but to my surprise, I was too late. Mr. Lyman responded in an elegant hand that the digging season was over, so he was returning my check but would still send me a catalog this year. He was true to his word, for his catalog arrived in today’s mail, and it is eye-popping and chin-dropping on several accounts. (You can click on the catalog for a closer look.)

First of all, this catalog comes in an envelope which is hand-addressed (both my address and his return address) in the same beautiful calligraphy as his note to me of last year. Secondly, the catalog appears to be hand-assembled. The photo on the front cardstock cover has been pasted on, though the word Snowdrops below seems to be printed. (And that’s exactly what his handwriting looks like.)

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