Cold Climate Gardening

This is a section of the Birthday Garden, which is a somewhat raised bed sandwiched between the driveway and the house. At the base of the stone wall, looking rather pale, are some Colchicum byzantinum. Above them is an unknown chrysanthemum, which Debi Lampman of Bedlam Gardens in King Ferry, NY gave to me this spring, when I visited her in the course of researching an article on gardening hotspots in Ithaca. Next to the mum, Colchicum ‘Lilac Wonder’ emerges from the blue-green foliage of a catmint (Nepeta sp.). I got it from Bluestone Perennials as ‘Six Hills Giant,’ but it has never …

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Every fall gardeners buy tulips, and every spring I read blog posts complaining about tulips. Part of the problem, I think, is that many people assume that since they are sold at the same time as daffodils and bloom about the same time, that they behave the same in the garden. But they actually don’t like the same cultural conditions.
Rob Proctor, in Naturalizing Bulbs, states

. . . the plains of Colorado differ little from the steppes and high plains of east-central Asia. Most tulips trace their ancestry to this region. Whether they naturalize [that is, come back and bloom every year] or not depends on the hybrid itself and whether conditions are horrible enough for it. By that, I mean cold in winter, moist in spring, and hot and dry in summer.

Hot and dry in the summer. Let me ask you: do you water your lawn or your garden in the summer? By any chance, are those the same places where you’ve got tulips planted? Daffodils will take that without a qualm, but not many tulips consider it the best conditions for forming new flowers in their bulbs. Some will even rot, which is why the more responsible bulb catalogs will tell you that tulips need good drainage.

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We’re in the midst of the last warm days of fall giving way to cool and colder weather. Light and medium frosts have been visiting with hard frosts soon to follow. It’s interesting to see how the plants in the garden respond to the weather. Placement and severity of frost have brought an interesting – ok, strange and half-burnt – look to the garden that keeps me poking my head everywhere noting the changes.

A medium frost took out the basil, marigolds, and isolated zinnias. It burned the outer growth of nasturtiums and bushy zinnias but they have recovered with milder weather. The annual Sages hormonium and farinacea have remained unblemished along with Ricinus, castor bean, and a self-sown petunia. Amaranths are still in form owing their protection to leafy screens of Cannas.

Some of the bird and chipmunk sown sunflowers continue their bloom but my earlier plantings are finished. It’s causing me to think of extending the season by trying 2nd and 3rd sowings. It may be silly of me to assume every fall will be similar to this one and the previous two. But if I don’t try it, how will I ever really know.

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Carol of May Dreams Gardens is proposing a Garden Bloggers’ Book Club for this winter. Quite a few people have signed on, and I’m adding my name to the list. Currently Carol is still soliciting suggestions for which books to read. Frankly, there have been so many good suggestions that I don’t know how she’ll pare the list down. We’ll all read the specified book for the month, publish our comments/review on our own blog and leave a comment at the blog of the coordinator for the month.

Easy and fun. Looking forward to it!

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The latest edition of Yard & Garden Line News, put out by the University of Minnesota Extension Service, is so full of handy information I’m tempted to quote the whole thing.

First, there’s a thought-provoking article on whether or not to wrap young trees to prevent sun scald. As with so many recommended practices in horticulture, this has been dispensed as advice for years without anyone rigorously testing it for effectiveness. It sounds like the jury is still out, but there are plenty of ways you can do it incorrectly, and other things that may be more important to getting your new (and expensive) tree through the winter. And did you know the difference between frost cankers and frost cracks? Neither did I.

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Would all of you long-time subscribers to my feed please change it to my new feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ColdClimateGardening . This will enable me to keep better statistics on who is using a feed to keep in touch and even add more functionality to it in the future.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

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As befits a good garden buddy, I gave some colchicum bulbs to my friend Bub several years ago. As a matter of fact, every time I dig up and divide a new kind, I give her some, so by now she has at least three kinds. But she’s never bought any herself, so all that she has originally came from me.

The strange thing is, she now has a type that I don’t have. In the photo above, the wider petaled flower in the upper left is what I would call Colchicum byzantinum. In the middle you can see some intermediate width petals, and all the way to the right, some really skinny-petaled blossoms. Below is a second photo which, while slightly out of focus, makes the petal difference quite clear.

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