Archive for the 'seeds' Category

Hepatica japonica ‘Shigyoku’

This spring I invested in two small and ridiculously beautiful double flowered Japanese Hepaticas from Thimble Farms in Canada.

Hepatica japonica ‘Wakakusa’

They are the result of years of breeding in Japan.  But even the less specialized Hepaticas are delightful to look at for their short flowering season in the spring.

Hepatica nobilis v. pyrenaica

And they are also sufficient reason to look into propagating them from seed.  It turns out that Hepatica seed is best sown very soon after harvesting so that now is the time to be seeking it from whatever source you use.  Or, alternatively, harvest your own Hepatica seed and pot it up now.  I found some very good references online for harvesting Hepatica seed but I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for.  I had never actually observed them to fall in the garden.  But this week I noticed the seed heads hanging over the neighboring pots were dropping little seeds on the gravel.  As I fished them out with my knife, I knocked some more seeds loose and pretty soon I had a handful.

Hepatica seeds falling off

Hepatica Seeds

For the outside plants I ordered some paper tea bags with drawstrings that I could put around the seed heads and thereby catch them if I wasn’t there when they came loose.

Tea bags for seed collection

Tea bag on Hepatica seed head

While I was going through this process around the yard with some other interesting plants like the Adonis, I noticed a little seedling in the pathway.

Tree Peony seedling

In the over thirty years that those Tree Peonies have been in place this is the first time I’ve seen a seedling.  Peonies are slow to develop from seed so this little guy is precious indeed.

Adonis amurensis ‘Fukujukai’ after the cold spell

We’ve just had a marvelous mid-sixties day as we closed out the cold spell that hit us for the end of January.  Although temperatures down to the very low teens is not unexpected for January we have gotten terribly spoiled by the mild winters that have been our lot of late.  We got jerked back to zone 7 reality with a week of very cold (for us anyway) weather, where temperatures hit a low of 12 degrees last Wednesday and then stayed bitterly cold through a couple of small snowstorms.  The Adonis and Camellias were the main plants that had really jumped the gun with regard to bloom cycle so I wasn’t sure how they would handle the really cold weather.  I ended up putting some leaves over the Adonis but I’m not sure that it was necessary.  Although they were folded up and bent over during the worst of the cold, they seem to have been completely unfazed by the temperatures.

Adonis at about 12 degrees in early morning

Adonis amurensis ‘Fukujukai’ in today’s sunshine

Note that the apparently burned off blossoms were there before the cold wave and were probably animal related damage (I hope that pest got a severe stomach ache as flowers in the ranuculus clan are generally pretty unappetizing).  A heavy snow or ice could probably damage the blossoms but it seems that straight old cold temperatures are not a problem.

I can’t say the same for the double pink Camellia as all those blossoms are now brown instead of pink.

Camellia after the cold spell

Hard to complain though.  We’ve many weeks and many flowers from this Camellia already this year.  The Camellia sasanqua was a little more colorful after the cold, but the blossoms are sort of like paper maché.  They don’t have their normal softness.

Camellia sasanqua after the cold

I used the warm weather to get a load of compost from the local landfill and start on some of the spring chores.

A load of compost from the local landfill

It was literally tee-shirt weather so I began building up the area where a tree fell down during Sandy.  I expect we will want to do more gardening in that area since the light will be improved and there will be fewer pine roots to compete with.

Getting a new garden bed ready for the spring

Last Friday I had gone with a friend down to Behnke’s nursery in Beltsville, Maryland to help with the North American Rock Garden Society seed exchange process.  It was interesting to see how organized one has to be to distribute 3500 different kinds of seeds to 750 people around the world.

Matching the correct seeds to the requests takes time and care

Later I received and planted my own set of seeds received from NARGS and from the Scottish Rock Garden Club.

Seed Exchange Distribution from NARGS

The NARGS seeds all planted up

Many of these seeds are quite challenging to grow but that’s part of what makes it interesting.

Zinnia

Well it’s full-blown summer now for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day and there is no difficulty in finding flowers in bloom.  I shared our wealth of lilies a few days ago so I think it’s only fair to look at some of the other flowers that are strutting their stuff right now.

As is our custom we have a couple of rows of annual flowers just for picking in the garden, including zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, nasturtium, and sunflowers as well as a bunch of gladiolus that carried over from year to year.

Annual Picking bed

The Cosmos and Zinnias are both so easy to grow from direct seeding in the garden and they provide so many pretty colors for arrangements.

Cosmos

The sunflowers provide a similarly long period of bloom and pickable flowers for the inside.

Sunflower ‘Ring of Fire’

Sunflower ‘Infrared mix’

Sunflower ‘Autumn Beauty mix’

Sunflower ‘Valentine’

The sunflowers also have tremendous interest for the birds and bees.  If you let them go to seed they become a magnet for goldfinches and indigo buntings.  And the zinnias and cosmos are frequented by butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.  The hummingbirds can also be seen hovering near the gladiolus.  Two of my favorite glads are ‘Margaret Rose’ and ‘Jester’ which are mirror reversed colors.

Gladiolus ‘Margaret Rose’ detail

Gladiolus ‘Jester’ detail

The glads can be found all around the house right now.

Glads and sunflower

Other annual flowers that are brightening the garden right now are the Cleome and Celosia.

Cleome

Blue-winged wasp on Celosia

This is the Celosia ‘Flamingo Feather’ and it seems to have a particular appeal for a wide variety of insects.  For some reason it is twice as tall (at least 3 feet) as the nominally same plant that I grew last year.  It has totally outgrown its spot on the edge of the front garden (notice it behind the black-eyed susans).

Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) in the Front bed

Now it would not fair to the garden if I didn’t share some perennials too.  The Joe-Pye weed is getting taller every day.

Joe-Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum) in bud

Don’t you wonder what they called this beauty before Joe Pye started dispensing it as a medicine?

The crocosmia are starting to fill in behind the lilies.  The biggest patch that we have is ‘Lucifer’ with as brilliant a red as you are going to find.

Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’

I suppose if you wanted to increase your Crocosmia, you could dig these in the fall and spread out the little corms, but even just left alone they seem to be multiplying just fine.  The only difficulty is keeping them upright as they have predilection for flopping.

In the front garden we’ve planted another Crocosmia, ‘Walcroy’, which has a brilliant orange/yellow color.

Crocosmia ‘Walcroy’

Think of the Crocosmia as miniature glads that are very hardy and productive.  I am enjoying them more every year.

Let me finish this posting with a brilliant red daylily.  I don’t know the variety, but I do know that year after year it continues to display the kind of red that most daylilies lust after and don’t achieve.

Red Daylily

I’m sure this came from the kids in Boston, the source of many good things…

I also want to encourage readers to visit May Dreams Gardens to see what other bloggers are growing and to follow Carol’s pilgrimage to Elizabeth Lawrence’s house in North Carolina.  Since in a very real sense that is the source of Garden Blogger’s Bloom Days, it’s worth reading about her quest for the root of it all.

Picture from the International Bulb Society Website

We are up in Boston this weekend for son Jonathan’s birthday.  In recognition of his serious interest in all things horticultural we gave him a membership in the International Bulb Society.  We were surprised and pleased by the prompt response to the gift application and the really excellent mailings that they sent out.  A combination of recent journals and bulletins includes authoritative descriptions and pictures of interesting geophytes (anything with underground storage) from around the world.

Mailings from the International Bulb Society

They are running behind on their printing so even more journals are promised as part of this subscription.  It is hard to overstate the quality of these publications — they include many detailed drawings and color photos.  The writings are much beyond the normal garden magazine descriptions.  In addition they maintain an online seed/bulb exchange that offers access to rare and unusual donated material.  This all strikes me as an ambitious undertaking for what is at heart a volunteer driven organization, but I wish them well and I for one, will likely join the membership list as well.

The Garden Picking Basket

I don’t know how many of you have ever had the classic bad dream where you are sitting down to take your final exam and you realize that you forgot to go to any of the classes.  Well I just had the horticultural equivalent last night.  I dreamt that it was July (wishful thinking in the cold of January) and I had forgotten to plant the corn and tomatoes.  Oh-my-God, what a bad thought that was.  What had I done with all those months that made me forget to plant those key elements in the vegetable garden?

Anyway, I took that as a sign and today I dug through the pile of catalogs on the floor, found all the ones related to seeds, and ordered many of the same things I regularly get from Harris and Stokes (standard veggies, some experiments like the new Emerite Pole Bean and Discovery Chard from Stokes, and cutting flowers in quantity for the vegetable? garden).  So I’ve covered the basics now and should be able to sleep more calmly tonight.  And at the same time, I’m now free to look at some of the other seed companies with more leisure.  In particular, I’m very taken with Diane’s Flower Seeds which has both of the grasses I was looking at for this — the Mexican Feather Grass (Nassella tenuissima) and the Northern Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium).  And then there’s the American Horticultural Society’s Annual Seed Exchange.  And we’ll see what else occurs to me over the next couple of weeks.