Veggie sowing–carrots, parsnips, radishes, celery root & parsley root all like to be direct sown, as well as dill, borage, coriander. You’d lose far more than you’d gain. Peas mid-late March to April, beans & corn after the first of June when the soil is really warm. I usually hazard some sweet peas mid March but they don’t always come up. Spinach you can direct sow the soonest as it likes cold days and not heat.

The indoor crowd includes tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos etc. now(ish), vine crops (melon-cucumber-squash tribe) toward the end of April. In Boundary County our growing season varies from 100 to 115 frost free days (maybe!) and so I’d choose the earliest varieties or at least those to mature in around 100 days, no more, until you see what ‘makes’ for you. I can never get Limas to set more than a few pods, sadly. But filet & romano beans–bumper crops. Zucchini and summer squash do well, and most early winter squash like Kuri, Acorn, etc. Tomato varieties I have had good luck with here include Oregon Spring, DelBarao, Stupice, Mikarda Sweet and Brandywine (some years) and even Black Krim. Most cherry & plum/pear types mature easily, as do the smaller paste and small slicers. Bill McDorman’s Seeds Trust has a very good selection of heirloom/op/etc. tomato seeds for cold climates–he’s in Sun Valley, Id. and collects Siberian varieties. Lots of good cold climate veggie advice there too.

As to roses–as soon as the ground can be worked without making it stick together, plant your roses. The prefer to not even know they’ve been moved, so before they leaf out is best unless they are potted. The roses you brought with you–wait until all the others have leafed to declare them dead, sometimes it takes a while. But–if they’re teas or have China blood in them, you may well lose them. I’m devoted to species and antiques, and not only for fragrance. The Rugosas, Gallicas, Damasks, Centifolias and most species are wonderfully hardy, requiring no coddling at all, and not succumbing to black spot. And, while you’re buying, be sure the roses are on their own roots. That way, when a few years of -30 in a row come, you won’t end up with all gangly non-flowering shoots from the rootstock. If you feel you must buy a grafted rose (and I nearly think they should be outlawed), be sure to plant the graft union at least 2-3″ below the ground level so roots can form on the rose you bought, not just its rootstock. The nursery or box will say at or above ground level, but that’s not for our climate. And if you get told not to bury the graft on roses, don’t listen to anything else that person tells you garden-wise, they haven’t been gardening here long enough to know what they’re talking about.
(Stepping down off my soap box) I remain,
Your Northern Correspondent

In case you are scratching your head, this is a response to comments that were posted here.

First, the re-naming: Bingos are now Matrix, Baby Bingos are Panache & Panolas, and what’s left of the Baby Bingo seem to be re-appearing through the 4th dimension of advertising as Icicles. (Check out the color names, the photos–overly coincidental, to me).
And for the over-the-top, hard to digest medal winners: some Flamencos are now renamed Boleros–no, strike that, some fool is calling them Pansymonium (I kid you not: “Pansymonium Hot ChiliGolden Grape”, Pansy Pansymonium Flamenco Cabernet, etc.) The -monium folks are the same ones who thought up the Icicle advertising coup. Actually, most pansies will overwinter if fall planted; and there are many varieties that are winter hardy (Sky, Skyline, the Cornutas, Crowns, Swiss Giants, Panolas……) and not so spendy, and you don’t have to put up with the Mad Ave blather.
As in: Pansy Pandora Rainbow Stupendo, Pansy Pansymonium Bolero Rosy Ringled and Pansy Bolero Soft Light Azure Limonette.
Gack.

We had over 2″ of rain Friday and Saturday, and the roses and lots else are sprawling. Luckily I had put tomato cages under Mme De Bruxelles as she was heavily laden with buds–she’s nearly on the ground now. This morning I picked a couple dozen more blooms for the rosewater jar, and the steamy heat already by 8 am made the fragrance wonderful. Yesterday when I went out to pick I woke up a fawn who was snoozing in the shade just outside the fence——so I trotted back inside the house after apologizing. I also delayed mowing until last night so as not to scare it or the doe and brand new fawn that are bedded down nearby.

I tell myself that’s why I’m behind on the mowing, anyway. I’m behind on my still room chores because of the weather–the roses are late and suddenly piling up on top of the lavender which feels a bit early.
When I started this year’s rosewater I was reminded of the admonitions to ‘remove the bitter white base to the petal’ in rose recipes and the fact this is something I’ve never done as it’s something I’ve never seen. I emailed around to rose growing friends and the only roses they could list that did were teas & a few hybrids but not Damasks. As Damask roses are the most fragrant roses I’ve ever grown, and the ones used historically for culinary & perfumery uses, I can’t help but feel bad for a person trying to use Teas for rosewater or jelly. Ick: leathery and tough, with a correspondingly coarse scent if any. The petals on a Damask rose are thinner than silk and floatingly sweet. This evening I’ll toast Midsummer Night with rose liqueur and strawberries.

Those wiggle-wires work a treat holding the plastic, but they are a bear to un-do and re-do. (Note to self: 4 years from now, take off the old on one day, and put the new on the next.) I’m only typing this because of the existence of ibuprofen.

The icebergs on the sides of the greenhouse and along the back of the house are gone now, but the ground is still freezing at night. I was going to dig some roses to ship last Sunday but the spade only went in about 5″. It was nearly 70 today, though, and the cute-as-a-dolly species tulips (Tulipa biflora ) are blooming along with the first of the Hyacinths, poof! new from yesterday. They join several different colors of pink violets (and some violet violets) and single and double primroses. Maple trees are blooming and the Forsythia are just almost ready to open.

It’s been a very strange spring, after a mild to non-existant winter. Our snow cover happened all at once from Christmas to mid January, then it was bizarrely warm and sunny for three weeks. (Three weeks of sun in north Idaho is strange at all, especially in mid-winter.) Our snowpack disappeared and even now, after a blessed 3″ of rain, it is at the level usual for July. I am looking at water restrictions, most likely. Good thing I had planned to tear down/up some raised beds anyway to cut down on some labor. And that I realized I don’t have to grow all the summer vegetables for Mom and myself. This year I will be investigating xeriscaping more thoroughly. I can’t mulch much as the voles think it’s heavenly, but I can be more careful where I line things out instead of just higgledy-piggeldy, out of the flats and into the ground.

As soon as the seeding is done, I’m going to start a general re-do of many of the beds, one I started last spring about this time and then broke my index finger in a couple of places. Just try to hold a spade while wearing a splint, let alone dig.

In the seedpans: whee! Ginkgos are gorgeous from the beginning, unfurling those lovely leaves right away, no messing about with cotyledons. And the taproots are mammoth too. Quercus coccinea push themselves out of the pans on their roots before they break the surface with shoots—–but here they come, and they are red!
Nature, bless her, handing out prizes just for attending.

Maybe you’re already aware of this. It is vital to us as gardeners and growers to try to fix this before it gets any more out of hand. This may be your last chance to keep that possible. This is a new addition to the draconian import regulations we have been warning about for the past few years. (Commercial seeds shipments are already being destroyed.)

And if you don’t think that applies to you as a home gardener, you need to know that as the regs also apply to private individuals, this means you could see a whopping $1000 fine for sending a gift of seeds to your aunt or best friend without getting an inspection and phytosanitary certificate. At up to $250,000 dollars per ‘infraction’, the independant nursery industry will dry up in a heartbeat.

The stated reason for these changes is to stop the spread of invasive weeds, but the invasives we deal with in this country on a large scale are those introduced on by state and federal agencies planting roadside erosion cover and wildlife forage (think kudzu and broom), not peonies introduced from Mongolia by Daniel Hinkley. The fact is that much of these regulations were written by folks from the largest 3 or 4 seed companies in the world who now happen to advise APHIS, the plant inspection arm of the USDA.

See also JL Hudson’s page on this new rule here.

To quote from the Hudson site, “The restrictions that will be imposed are so serious, and so expensive to comply with, that it will place the biological diversity of the planet into corporate hands.”

The following is excerpted from a Shade Gardening list article which explains what is happening and how you can (somewhat) help guide the process before it is too late (April 11):

“You may or may not be aware that USDA-APHIS is proposing major changes in the regulations for the importation of nursery stock, i.e. what they are now calling “Plants for Planting”, which means ALL plant parts capable of growing - rooted and non-rooted cuttings and plants, seeds, corms, bulbs and tubers.

All those who belong to plant or garden related societies should be interested and concerned about the proposed changes to existing import regulations. If you belong to a society or garden club, please contact your president or board of directors and make them aware of this issue so that they can inform the other members via your newsletter or other publications.

From our point of view, as keen gardeners, the ‘clean list’ approach would be a disaster since it would mean that all taxa not already imported in large quantities would be severely restricted - even those that have been safely grown in this country in small quantities for many years.
From the point of view of small nurseries, a ‘clean list’ would be a disaster because it would mean that newly developed cultivars that are the latest and greatest across the pond could not be sold here.

Anyone who operates a small or mid-size nursery should be vitally interested - the regulations they ultimately pass could mean your livelihood.
If you know any nursery folk who are not online, please let them know about this issue; help them add their comments. There is no big list of nurseries; no way to contact all of them, so if you can help in this regard, please do it.”

Read the whole article: ‘Until April’

Here is the docket list page.

“The docket is about the 18th item down the page.

You will see this:

Nursery Stock Regulations
Docket No. 03-069-1
Advance notice of proposed rulemaking and request for comments
7 CFR Part 319
Published December 10, 2004
69 FR 71736-71744

Text | PDF | EDOCKET
These are the links on the APHIS site to the actual document. The first is to a text file on the web. The second downloads an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file to your computer. The third links to the page with comments that have been made, which contains links that you can use to submit your own comment. “

We have a picture of the house from about 1908 that shows the tree already in place. It was one of a pair, the other having succumbed to old age many years ago. Average lifespan for pears is about 70 years I have read and so we are relieved, pleased and amazed every year at its resililence. This one toils on, each year surprising us with its yield and its sturdiness under huge snowfalls almost every winter. Bended but unbroken might be its motto. A friend grafted a pair of starts off it for me and this year I set one out in my own young nursery. The tree my parents got for it as a pollinator after its mate died, another Bartlett, just is not the same. Though the fruit improves in size and flavor each year, it is coarser, not as sweet, and a touch smaller. Perhaps it’s just in need of another 50 years of winters & summers?

We canned over 4 days, I sold pears at the market, made pear balsamic vinegar (mmm!), and have put up pear schnapps for the holidays. Canning pears is intimately tied into my and my mother’s life for another reason, falling exactly on her birthday. It has begun in the past few years to creep up a bit as the pears are ripening earlier, now about a week sooner and this was not a terribly hot summer. Global warming? Who knows. But we feel a bit dislocated.

While picking the fruit, the beauty of it was amazing. Pears have silvery bark and glossier leaves than their cousins the apples; this centenarian has reticulated bark on its trunk in squarish chunks, the age spots of the fruit tree world. Fruit needen’t be beautiful to ripen seed, but as the pears at the top of the tree facing south ripen they blush a lovely red over a golden tinted green. The smell is heavenly, and the fruit so silky & juicy you really need to eat it over the sink. What a great universe! Beauty for beauty’s sake and bounty on top of strength & utility.