Cape Diamond, purchased from Der Rosenmeister in Ithaca, NY last year

If you’ve been gardening for any length of time, a multitude of these routines accumulate after a while. Often they are based on research, or on the little booklet that came with the plant, or because your dad always did it that way. Follow the same maintenance care for a plant–or a garden–for a decade or so, and I guarantee the “why” of what you are doing, at least for some things, will fade into oblivion.

That’s why we have books like The Truth About Garden Remedies and The Informed Gardener. That’s also why we have search engines on the internet.

According to Rayford Reddell, as alfalfa decomposes it yields triacontanol, which acts as a growth stimulant, encouraging basal breaks. Basal breaks is rosarian-speak for “increased vigor and flower production.” Now, I know I didn’t know that before, but I’m glad I found out.

We usually see the trees budding in early May, not early April

Phenology? What’s That?

Phenology, if you’ve never come across the term, is the science (or perhaps art) of tracking natural occurrences and changes over a long period of time, to discover the patterns and rhythm of them, in order to learn from them. It is one of many good reasons to keep a garden notebook, so you can develop an accurate phenology of your own unique ecosystem.

When You Hear the Peepers, Plant Peas

A sight I never thought I'd see: Cornelian cherry and Juneberry blooming at the same time.

Develop Your Own Very Local Phenology

I didn’t have any garden to-do’s associated with the Cornelian cherry, the forsythia, or the Juneberries, so they’re not messing me up. I do have a good idea of when our last frost is, and counting back from that is probably still the best guide to when to plant things. Of course, the more years you’ve been gardening in the same place, and recording this date, the more accurate you will be. Nature Calendar is an interesting phenological source for those of us in hardiness zones 4-7, east of the Mississippi. If you haven’t spent much time in your present garden, it can help you pinpoint where you are in the cycle of seasons. You can also peruse an earlier post I wrote on phenology, which had observations I had collected from a variety of sources. It frustrated me then, and still does, that many of these maxims either do not agree, or are not precise enough to be helpful. But if you have nothing to go on, they can be a good place to start.

Do you use phenology to direct your vegetable garden planting, or guide you in other garden chores? I’d be interested to hear of your observations.

UPDATE: Just discovered the USA National Phenology Network.

*Quote attributed to Mark Twain

Mud season is capricious; spring-like one week, back to winter the next.

Oh cold climate wise one, Have you seen the forecast for Friday?! Snow and lows in the high teens. What does this mean for all the little perennials I’ve pulled leaf mulch off of? Should it go back on? I’m really looking forward to actual gardening this weekend, but Friday is a bummer!

As I mentioned last year, if you live in a cold climate, you really don’t want to uncover every plant on the first mild day, because, as you’ve discovered, there are sure to be more wintry days before spring is truly here. (Ahem. Do you remember that hard freeze we had in late May last year?)

Clean Up the Pretty Views

The fact is, most plants can grow through whatever mulch or dead plant growth that happens to be laying around. There are two primary reasons for spring clean-up: aesthetics and rodent control. Using this criteria, the first places I clean up are the locations where I know the earliest spring bulbs are coming up. The window of opportunity (WOO) for this is pretty narrow, because before you know it, they are too far along to pull a rake over them. For the same reason, I tidy up the areas I can see from inside the house, so even on cold, blustery days the view outside looks good.

Clean Up the Rodent Hideouts

Here's one example of the vole mischief I find all over my garden in spring.

Search Out and Destroy the Weeds

Of course, the same mulch that protects your garden plants also shelters the weeds. In early spring, I sometimes remove the mulch (or last year’s garden remains), pull the weeds, and put the mulch back. That’s assuming that the soil has thawed enough to remove them, as it already has this year. I avoid stepping on the soil as it is still quite sodden and stepping on it will compact it.

Try Not to Fret

Most established plants in your garden should be fine, covered or not, unless you have a severe case of zone denial, or we get some really out-of-season weather, like that freeze last May. If you have anything that you planted just last fall, or that you especially prize–I’d leave that covered for at least another month, perhaps to the first week of May. For me, that’s four to five weeks before the last frost. Ideally, you’d take it off in stages, but it’s really a judgment call, balancing the time you have, the expected weather in the near future, how far along the plant is and your gardener’s instinct.

In January, the snowdrops in the Secret Garden looked like this:

Snowdrops in the Secret Garden January 2010

Those same snowdrops in early March

Snow melts first around the base of trees, even stumps

The snow melts in damp areas first, though bulbs for this site must tolerate soggy soil.

The south-facing areas amongst shrubs are another good place for the earliest bulbs

Plant some early bulbs by a corner of the house that traps heat.

South-facing areas near pavement are the best of all. Can you see the snowdrops?

Label Your Images

As you may have noticed, these images don’t look like much. If you don’t rename your images, tag them, write captions for them, or whatever your photo managing program permits, you will look at them in July and wonder, “What was I thinking? Why did I take a bunch of photos of dirty, tired snow?” Put them in a folder labeled Plant Bulbs Here and make a note in your calendar to order them in June, when there are discounts for early online orders.

Which Bulbs Are the Earliest?

Of the commonly available snowdrops, Galanthus elwesii is the earliest. Winter aconites (Eranthis spp.) are reputedly equally as early, though they have not been so for me. I am not sure if they are coming back this year. When they like your garden, they really take off. The small species crocus bloom soon after the snowdrops for me. Two to three weeks after the very first blooms, the larger Dutch crocus, the Siberian squills, and the glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa) are all blooming. By then it’s a whole different ball game.

Yesterday I told you how I finally realized species tulips planted in the peony bed would help to bridge the bloom gap of late spring. I got the tulips chosen and purchased, and now I’m going to show you how I planted them.

The Smartest Way to Plant 150 Tulip Bulbs

But first let’s talk about the most efficient way of planting them, just so you know my way is not the only or best way. The most efficient way of planting them would be to dig a foot-wide, fifteen-foot long trench some four to six inches deep. Then you would place all the bulbs in the trench, somewhat randomly but more or less evenly spaced. And the truly smart person would have placed a tarp alongside the trench upon which to dump the removed soil, so all that dirt could be quickly replaced into the trench after the bulbs were planted.

The Way I Planted 150 Tulip Bulbs

But I didn’t plant the tulips that way. I knew there were crocuses and snowdrops in the bed and I wanted to save and replant them with the tulips. I also didn’t want to harm any peony roots. Also because of the peonies, I wanted to avoid stepping on the bed if at all possible. I had already seen some red points, the tips of next year’s sprouts, poking through the soil in places.

So, I dug out one square foot at a time.

Yes, I used two rulers to measure a square foot.

This is one of several crocus clumps I unearthed. I also found snowdrop clumps.

I placed ten bulbs in each hole. I avoided straight lines better as I went along.

Not all of the divided bulbs will bloom next year, but in a couple of years each separated bulb will be a new clump.

After I filled in one hole, I would move the farthest tent pegs to mark the corners of the new square and dig again. I did it fifteen times, spaced over two days. As I worked, I wondered if it would look more like fifteen disparate clumps of tulips, or one unbroken sweep. I decided not to worry about that. I thought about how I was being a tad particular, measuring each square foot and counting out bulbs. Oh, well, that’s just me. That’s how I garden. My gardening methods fit my personality and not a work schedule or business plan. It’s also why, I mused, I could never garden for a living. I sleep better at night knowing I saved hundreds of small bulbs worth pennies each, at the cost of several hours of expensive (if I was paying myself) labor. And it will still look beautiful next spring.

How about you? How does your personality show up in your gardening?

After the snowdrops, after the crocuses, after the daffodils, there is just about nothing blooming in the front of the house until the June show of peonies, irises, and poppies. I have not been the first person to notice this bloom gap, not by a long shot, and the traditional recommendation is to plant tulips to bridge this gap.

Tulips As Annuals?

The only thing is, tulips don’t thrive in my clay soil and it’s taken me a while to get used to the idea of planting them as annuals. I have nothing against annuals–when they’re grown in someone else’s garden. In my garden it seems profligate to spend so much money on plants that won’t come back. I used to grow a lot of annuals from seed, but discovered they need the most babysitting (watering, potting on, etc.) right about when I need to spend the absolute most amount of time outside weeding, mulching, and generally asserting a modicum of control. So I tend to grow the kind of annuals that self-sow, which tulips are not.

This spring I finally got it through my thick head that species tulips tend to be more perennial than a lot of the more “woo-woo look at me” sorts of tulips. Here I’d been growing Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’ for over ten years in the Crocus Bank, and it took me this long to realize I could grow it elsewhere. I did realize that the Crocus Bank was not the best place for it. In order for the crocuses to come back every year, we have to let the foliage grow to its full extent and go dormant. And while we are waiting for that to happen, the grass is growing longer, too. Consequently, by the time the ‘Lilac Wonder’ tulips are blooming, they get kind of lost in the grass.

The petite 'Lilac Wonder' tulips got lost in the high grass.

But on the other side of the driveway is the peony bed, which is looking for some action while the peonies get up to speed. A whole mess of ‘Lilac Wonder’ tulips would not get lost with some peony shoots as a backdrop. I had learned from planting the crocus bed that guessing how many bulbs one would need to plant a given area does not always work well. So the first order of business was to measure the length of the bed.

I needed to know the length of the bed in order to order the appropriate quantity of bulbs.

Shopping for Tulip Bulbs

Then it was time to go shopping. Brent & Becky’s Bulbs has the most information packed site. When I checked their information for Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’, it told me I should plant 10 to 15 bulbs per square foot. Figuring 10 bulbs per square foot along a 15-foot length, I could have ordered 150 bulbs of ‘Lilac Wonder’. But I decided to buy 50 bulbs of ‘Little Beauty’, another species-type tulip, and the remaining hundred ‘Lilac Wonder.’ I thought the darker color of ‘Little Beauty,’ mixed in randomly, would add a little zing to the ‘Lilac Wonder,’ and I also hoped the inner color of ‘Little Beauty’ would match the outer petals of ‘Lilac Wonder.’ I’ll let you know next spring.

Here are the tulip bulbs straight out of the box.

Spent 2 hours cutting dead stuff down (mostly peony foliage), revealing weeds that will have to be pulled another day. Sigh.

Just deadheaded for 15 min. Long overdue & makes me feel better, even though it’s the tip of the iceberg

Planted 6 Henna coleus and the last 2 Mint Mocha coleus and Midnight Lace vine. All annuals finally in the ground. Weeding next.

Planted Redshift coreopsis and rearranged some heucheras last night and weeded here and there. The coreopsis is a trial plant from Skagit Gardens. On the tag it looks like it has a maroon ring around the center, so I planted it near the purple smoke bush. But in the accompanying literature it is pictured with a bright red ring. So it might not complement the smoke bush. I’ll let you know. The weeding was totally random: every time I saw one I felt like pulling out, I did. No rhyme or reason, and plenty left for another day. Raining again now. All the rearranged plants are getting a good start in their new homes.