Cold Climate Gardening

What kind of soil do you have? If you’ve gardened in the same spot for any length of time, you probably already have a pretty good idea. If you’re shopping around for a piece of property, especially if you’re new to to the area, knowing what the soil is like before you buy might help you decide amongst several choices, though I concede it’s a lot more helpful when the original soil is still there. The way subdivisions are built these days, that isn’t likely.

Anyway, in the course of researching what types of online information were available for my ideal regional gardening book, I contacted Jonathan Russell-Anelli, who is with the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University. He pointed me to the Web Soil Survey run by the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS). This is “a web based mapping service that allows one to look at soils and query the map based on certain interests - i.e. drainage, pH, etc.” I tried it out and, I have to say, it takes some getting used to. I confess I wasn’t very motivated to master the learning curve because the information for my county hasn’t been incorporated yet.

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This time of the year, it’s amazing what a difference a day can make. Thursday, snow on the ground. I couldn’t have taken these photos on Thursday because these plants were still buried under snow. Friday, snow had melted, but nothing had bloomed. Yesterday (Saturday) the sun was shining and I had snowdrops blooming in three different locations. These first ones are ‘Sam Arnott,’ purchased from Odyssey Bulbs, who assured that they are the real thing. (Apparently there are impostors lurking in the trade.) But I remember them being much taller last year. This year, they give the appearance of being buried too deeply, as if (speaking anthropomorphically) they are buried up to their chests instead of their shins. I suspect our wacky winter may have something to do with this. The double snowdrops in the next photo have the same problem.

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There are lots of spots on our property that need a bench that don’t have one yet. The most I’ve done so far to rectify this is to collect plans for building garden benches. Yesterday I got the latest issue of Lowe’s self-published magazine, The Woodpost. (You can sign up here if you’re interested.) In it, there was a plan for making a garden bench that seemed pretty simple and straightforward. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it on their website. (I suspect it will eventually be here.) But in the course of looking around for it, I found plans for a different garden bench that actually looks a little more classy, but is probably also more difficult …

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Ralph Snodsmith lives in Suffern, NY. He worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension. I have no doubt that he is a knowledgable gardener. But this book reads more like an instruction manual for beginning gardeners than a regionally specific reference work. Sure, you’ll find a map of USDA Hardiness zones by county. Occasionally he makes references to various NY cities. But for the most part, it seems like you could be reading a basic gardening book aimed at a good portion of the U.S.

He organizes his book by plant type: annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees, etc. I will admit there are some sections aimed at New Yorkers. The chapter on seaside favorites would be helpful to all those gardening on the Long Island shore. And given the population density of New York City and the surrounding area a chapter on city and small-space gardens makes sense. But if you’ve been gardening for years in a different part of the country and want to know specifically how gardening in New York is different, you won’t get too much help here.

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On Thursday, March 2, we got 7 inches (18cm) of snow. Some of you are probably fainting in your chairs: “Seven inches of snow! In March!” but my cold climate readers are surely not surprised. Actually, in March, no weather is surprising, and there have been plenty of winters when we would be saying “thank goodness it’s only 7 inches!”

What I find most interesting is that this snowstorm was one of the heaviest, perhaps the heaviest, of the whole winter. Now that’s surprising! The only snowstorm that came close occurred on December 9, 2005. We didn’t measure that accumulation ourselves, but someone else from our area reported 6.8 inches to the National Weather Service. Since it’s doubtful that we will …

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I know at least some of you know about Garden Voices, because I can see in my stats that you’re coming from there. For those of you who haven’t yet gone there, you should. It is what is known as a reblog. It’s a website, started by GardenWeb (which is now owned by iVillage) that republishes excerpts from garden blogs all over. What makes this better than something like Bloglines is that the entries are picked over by OldRoses, the moderator. She chooses the ones she thinks will be of most interest, and adds her own comments to some. Comments, I might add, that don’t give much away, but only make you more curious. It’s now one of my …

Popularity: 6% [?]