#Bulbs

Who Planted These Here?

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You can see that these cracks at the base of our stone wall and in our driveway are just prime spots for all sorts of “vegetation,” to put the best possible spin on it. Weeds love them, but so do opportunistic bits of other little plants.

There are always little bits of some sort of sedum growing here. I keep hoping that the sedum will out-compete the weeds, like the chickweed that you can see already sprouting. But they have different growth cycles and the sedum don’t really get going until later in the season, while this is prime chickweed time.

If you’re wondering how the grape hyacinths got here, it was my buddies the ants šŸœ. Muscari have a special little structure called an eliaisome that ants love. They bring that back to their colonies and spread plants around that way. It’s not exactly pollinization–it’s mechanical movement.

My lawn is filled with grape hyacinths that I haven’t planted, courtesy of my buddies, the ants. So I am always very careful to leave them alone, so long as they are away from the house. In my kitchen, well, it’s a different story. But luckily that happens pretty rarely.

It’s yet another benefit of being pesticide free in the yard!

Waves of Plants

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Herbs and tender evergreens

it’s kind of funny–my plants come in in “waves,” as l call it. And people who know me will periodically ask, “are all your plants in? They have no idea what they are asking!

The tropical plants, or house plants, are all in because it is getting quite cool here. It’s down to the mid 40s this morning. So the 200 or so tropical plants are safely inside and have been for the last 3 weeks. I will talk more about my theory on that–and some other theories–on Monday.

Amaryllis bulbs

Then there are these: amaryllis bulbs. They should be drying out before I bring them into the basement for winter. I may have to bring them in when they are wetter than I care for them to be. I should have brought them in this past weekend but I was too busy pruning dead stuff off my other plants because of our summer drought.

Then I have the plants that come into the sun porch–that’s the photo at the head of this post. These herbs and “tender” evergreens can take some cold, but not New England cold. They will need to come in before a hard freeze.

Container succulents

And then there are my containers that also will need to come in before a hard freeze because, as a general rule, container plants can’t be left to over-winter outside here. These are things like potted succulents that would be hardy if I were growing them in the ground, blueberries in containers, and plants that everyone else thinks are appropriate to plant in the fall like hydrangeas and roses so they ship them to me but if I were to try to plant them now, they would die–so I have to overwinter them in my garage.

So the “are all your plants in?” question is hugely complicated!

February Flowers–Hyacinths

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Forced hyacinths

Since February is a short month–and one that, at least in my part of the world is cold, gray and nasty!– I thought I would bring a little color and joy to my blog with something I will call “February Flowers.”

As a general rule, I don’t talk about flowers much, particularly when it comes to indoor plants. I am more apt to focus on beautiful leaves–which last a lot longer, and sometimes can be showier than flowers anyway.

But since I literally branched out and did something different with #bloganuary, I thought I would try something different–although still in my traditional gardening vein–for February as well. So let’s do it!

The photo above is of my hyacinths that I started forcing Thanksgiving weekend. They are beginning to come into bloom now, and what’s interesting is that I started 9 of them at the same time and only these 3 are ready–and even these 3 are not even ready at the same time. They have all been kept in the same place at the same temperature so that is not the issue. I guess bulbs have their own internal clock, particularly when being forced. That makes what the growers do at all these indoor flower shows all the more impressive!

Mini daffodils

I always supplement my own forcing with whatever’s available at the market because I am always starved for color this time of year. And for whatever reason, I usually want to buy cut tulips and they have been few and far between this year, making these cute little yellow daffodils all the more welcome!

I Can’t Wait To Plant!

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Some of my seed and plant catalogs

Well, that didn’t take long.

All you have to do is to look back at my post on January 1 of this year. What I said then was that I thought my gardening in 2021 would be fairly scaled back, as my gardening in 2020 had been.

Apparently though, I underestimated my “pent up” gardening demand.

It’s as if something happened. I am not sure if it was the couple of snows at the end of January and in early February, or what quite happened, but it was as if the ā€œgardeningā€ switch in my brain suddenly got turned on to hyper drive. I canā€™t wait to plant!

I am poring over catalogs to see what I might want to add to the garden. I am trying to decide how I might incorporate edibles with the copious critter problem that I have. I am planning different container designs (always a favorite thing to do).

I am attending Zoom lectures about different gardening techniques, growing mushrooms from a kit in my kitchen (and that is a story for another day!), and going to webinars about what the plant breeders are doingā€”one of my favorite topics anyway.

When I am out walking my dog, as she sniffs around my garden beds, I am eyeing them critically to see what can be added, what can be pruned and what can be changed. Iā€™ve already had a little tree pruning done and I plan to do a little more if the weather permits.

Those of you who remember my ā€œsustainableā€ articles from earlier years know that I am not one to clean up my garden beds too early because I want to ensure that the beneficial insects have plenty of time to surviveā€”so about all I can do outside is prune on warmish days. And while I do love to prune, thereā€™s a limit to how creative that can be.

Fortunately, I am restraining myself from buying (right now, at least) because, well, who knows? We are still in the middle of this pandemic and the last thing I want to happen is to have boxes of plants to arrive when I am unable to care for them.

But it’s such a joy to look at the new plants and to dream! Hope springs eternal!