This is my regular post about what is blooming in the garden on Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, the 15th of each month.

Due to an unseasonably warm month of March, we are about two to three weeks ahead of schedule. There is lots going on in the garden! I’ll just show you a few of the showiest or more unusual spring blooms, or those that I didn’t show last April. Oh, that’s right – those plants finished blooming weeks ago!

The bearded iris, above, is a “passalong plant” given to me years ago by a friend. It is right along my patio, and I think of my friend every spring when it blooms.

I’ve planted a lot of carpet bugle, Ajuga reptans, as groundcover throughout my gardens. It is evergreen, tough, and grows in sun or shade. It blooms prolifically in spring – and might give a sporadic bloom or two later in the growing season. There are several different cultivars with different colors or sizes of leaves. This one is ‘Catlin’s Giant’.

Last year, Easter was really late, so I was on a spring break vacation (to Disney World!) the last ten days or so of April. Wouldn’t you know, but my tree peony ‘Joseph Rock’, pictured above, picked that time to bloom. This fabulous plant has the largest, most gorgeous flowers – but the entire bloom period is only about a week. Luckily, it’s a handsome shrub during the rest of the growing season.

This is Corydalis lutea, commonly called yellow fumitory or yellow corydalis. It’s a woodland perennial and produces these bright yellow, short-spurred flowers off and on from May (April this year) to September. Apparently this plant is much more vigorous in England, which is cooler and more humid, and it grows like a weed there. I have one small nook of shade garden, and usually have a couple of these blooming, when I remember to water.

This is Euphorbia ‘Ruby Glow’, a handsome spurge, with red stems and gray-green leaves. The flowers have long-lived chartreuse bracts that remain showy for weeks.

This view is the front corner of my house from the side yard. The splendid white flowering tree is a hawthorn, Crataegus viridis ‘Winter King’. To the left is the Koreanspice viburnum, Viburnum carlesii. I’ve let a row of these grow to about 10 feet tall along the blank two-story wall of the house, pruning them at the base to let a bit of light in the tiny basement windows. The fragrance of these snowball-like flowers is intoxicating!

Beneath the hawthorn is a blanket of creeping phlox, Phlox stolonifera, and a few spikes of purple ajuga, Ajuga reptans ’Bronze Beauty’. This cultivar has bright green-bronze foliage with a hint of purple that is more pronounced in cold weather. See the closeup, below.

The weather has been fantastic today, a Sunday, and I spent some time planting a couple of rose bushes that arrived bare-root in the mail, and pulling weeds – an easy task after yesterday’s soaking rain. Tomorrow I’ll be starting seeds, indoors, of the faster-growing warm-season flowers and vegetables. Happy Gardening!

Sue

I’ve been eating a lot of my favorite early spring vegetable the past few weeks. Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) is the earliest vegetable harvested from the garden each spring – a sure sign that the gardening season has begun!

One of nature’s perfect foods, asparagus is elegant yet easy to prepare. It is equally good raw, blanched, roasted, grilled or steamed. So far this year, I have used it in omelets and frittata, quiche and risotto. My favorite easy-prep method is to microwave the spears a minute until they are bright green and crisp-tender, adding a splash of olive oil and a dash of lemon pepper.

Asparagus is one of a handful of perennial vegetable crops, along with rhubarb and horseradish.  A well-established bed can produce for decades, so it is worth the extra effort needed to get it started right.

The plants may be grown from seeds or crowns. Most people find it easier to start with crowns, which are readily available at plant nurseries now. Asparagus crowns are the base and roots of one-year old plants. I’m growing both the green ‘Jersey Giant’ and ‘Purple Passion’ asparagus.

To plant the crowns, start with a trench about six inches deep. Work some compost into the bottom of the trench. Then make a row of small mounds of soil about a foot apart for each crown. Spread the roots of each crown over the mound. Cover with 2-3 inches of soil. After the plants begin to grow, fill in the remainder of the trench.

After planting, the foliage is allowed to grow and feed the plant. Keep the plants well watered and weed free and top dressed with compost or manure. That’s it!

Asparagus takes three years to produce a good quantity of spears for harvest. But according to Ohio State University, it is o.k. to sneak a couple of spears for a special dinner after the first year. Once established, young tender asparagus shoots can be harvested for a four week period each year in early spring.

Asparagus plants are actually very attractive and ferny, turning a lovely gold color in the fall. If you don’t have room in the vegetable garden for asparagus, try growing it in the landscape as an ornamental hedge. I cut the dried fronds back in March just before new spears appear. By early summer, the ferny hedge is up and growing.

Happy Gardening!

Sue

Well, I knew it was too good to last. The amazingly warm weather we were having has given way to more normal, cooler temperatures. Our summer preview is over, and it’s back to regular spring weather. Of course the fabulous Hellebores from the Hellebore Gold Collection, above, have been blooming since February. They don’t care about the weather!

I’m actually a bit relieved about the return to normalcy. The unusually warm weather was beginning to seem a little creepy, knowing that our frost free date is not until around May 10. We should expect frost any time throughout the month of April and early May.

And no, I’m not doing anything to protect the tender leaves and flowers that were coaxed out of hibernation by the warm spell. I’m trusting Mother nature to take care of things and hoping for the best. I surely don’t have enough buckets or blankets to cover all my perennial plants and trees, and I didn’t plant any tender annual flowers or veggies yet this spring.

One of my enjoyable tasks this past week has been to cut back the tattered winter foliage from some of my perennial plants, like the heavenly Helleborus orientalis and it’s hybrids, also called  the Lenten Rose.  Above is a Brandywine hellebore that needs to have the ugly foliage at its base removed. Below, the same plant after the cleanup.

These amazing plants are best known for their unusually long bloom time – from February through April in my Cincinnati garden – providing winter interest with both the flowers and their evergreen foliage. They grow well in the shade garden, thriving under trees, where other plants may languish.

About Hellebores:

• This perennial grows from 1 to 1.5 feet tall and wide, in an upright clump.
• The leathery, dark green, evergreen leaves are divided into 7 to 9 segments and look good almost year ’round.
• Flower colors and sizes are variable, but they are usually white to pink to plum-colored, often spotted inside. They are nodding, and usually 3 to 4 inches across. Bloom begins in February; flowers remain for 12 weeks or more.
• Plant hybridizers are introducing many new cultivars, especially with double or more upright flowers, and marbled or silvery leaves. The amazing peach-colored flowers below are ‘Apricot Blush’; image from Perennial Resource.

• Hellebores prefer part to full shade and moist, well-drained soil – but tolerate dry shade surprisingly well.
•  They are terrific in the shade or natural garden, under trees. When massed, the plants form an attractive ground cover. I’ve planted some near my kitchen window, patio and sidewalk for a pick-me-up on dreary winter days!
• New plants can be obtained from division of the clumps in spring, and from seed.
• They are deer and rabbit resistant. This may be because the leaves, stems and roots are toxic. Exercise caution when deciding where to plant them if young children are around.

Hellebores are truly tough and beautiful plants that might deserve a place in your garden! Happy Gardening,

Sue Trusty, the Trusty Gardener

It is garden bloggers bloom day again – the 15th of each month, when garden bloggers everywhere show and tell what is blooming in their garden. I always look forward to the pansies and violas, like the violas above, that bloom early in the season. It is a sure sign that spring is on it’s way!

Here is an old-fashioned flowering quince, Chaenomeles ‘Texas Scarlet’. This is one of the first shrubs to bloom in my garden after the witch hazel (Hamamelis sp.).

It wouldn’t be spring without daffodils. Their sunny yellow color is a welcome sight and makes us dream of sunny days to come.

This year, I tried something new – I planted crocus bulbs in the lawn! They look really cute, and will just get better as they multiply over the next few years.

The Hellebores have been blooming for a few months, but they are fuller than ever right now.

Spring seemed to suddenly appear this year. This feeling is reinforced by our unusually warm weather – several days in a row in the mid-70′s, in mid-March! It is a gardeners dream.

Happy Gardening,

Sue

The brassicas are plants from the family Brassicaceae, also known as the mustard family, or sometimes called the cabbage family. This group includes many delicious vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and kohlrabi – in addition to mustard, of course. The kale plant, above, overwintered in my garden this year.

Turnips and Chinese cabbages belong to this family, too. And don’t forget the newly popular broccoli raab. I love to grow (and eat!) this vegetable. It is the quickest and easiest of the brassicas to grow, in my opinion. The image below shows Chinese cabbage plants growing in the garden last spring.

The brassicas are cool-season plants. This means that the seeds germinate at cooler soil temperatures than the warm-season plants, like peppers and tomatoes, require. The plants are frost tolerant, preferring to grow in the cool temperatures of spring or fall.

In fact, hot summer temperatures cause these plants to bolt, or go to seed. When this happens, the vegetables are no longer sweet and tasty. So these plants should be grown early in the season. Sometimes a second crop is sown in mid-summer to mature in the fall. Below, broccoli raab plants gone to seed in July!

To start the brassicas indoors from seed, I plant them about a month to six weeks before they go outside, which is about a month before the final frost in late spring. That means early March – right now – in our climate. The seedlings are grown under lights until they are large enough to go outdoors.

I sowed broccoli, broccoli raab, Chinese cabbage and kale seeds indoors last weekend. And because of the flukey warm weather spell we’ve been having, I started some outside from seed at the same time! Into a raised bed I had prepared last fall (add compost; rake smooth), I planted seeds of broccoli raab, kale, turnips and kohlrabi.

The turnips and kohlrabi, having a long taproot that doesn’t want to be disturbed, are always direct seeded. The broccoli raab and kale grow well either way – direct seeded or started early indoors. I’ll see which plants grow best by this little experiment.

Other things I always direct sow early in the season include salad greens (lettuce, arugula and such), peas (traditionally planted on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, in our climate), spinach, chard, beets, radishes, carrots and dill. I planted them all, and mulched with a light layer of chopped up leaves, as you can see above. To the left are some garlic plants, and to the right you can see the bottom of a net cover I devised to keep the rabbits out. They love nothing more than carrot and beet greens, not to mention lettuce.

Gardeners are optimists, and I’m expecting that these very-early planted vegetables will be fine. If not, I have enough seeds for a second try.

Happy Gardening!

Sue

Our unusually warm winter marches on.  We’ve had mild weather most of the winter and almost no snow. Not a single snowman, and I miss the pretty snow blanketing the garden! Without snow, the landscape looks rather dreary. Besides that, how will this affect our gardens and landscapes?

Plants that become dormant in winter must have a certain amount of cold weather before the buds will begin growth the next spring. This chilling requirement is measured by the total number of hours at temperatures between 0 and 45 degrees F that a plant accumulates. While our winter has been mild, we have had a significant number of hours in that range.

The number of chilling hours required to break dormancy differs between plant species and between varieties within a species. For example, many Ohio apple cultivars require a minimum of 1200 chilling hours. Peach and nectarine fruit trees require less, usually between 750 to 1050 chilling hours. Raspberries require 800 to 1700 hours, and blackberries require 350 to 600 hours depending upon the variety and type.

The chilling requirements of many of our plants have already been met this winter. For these plants, dormancy is over and warm periods can lead to bud swell or even flowering. Buds that have swollen have lost their winter hardiness and can be damaged by severe cold. This is still possible – even likely – in our unpredictable March weather. Mom always said, “March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.” And maybe it even morphs between lion and lamb a few times!

If a return to freezing temperatures occurs, there can be damage to tissue and flower buds resulting in less of a spring flower show, and in lower fruit yields, too. Will my saucer magnolia tree - Magnolia x soulangiana, buds shown above – flower this year? Or will the flowers turn to mush from freezing spring temperatures? We will have to wait to find out.

There’s really nothing we can do to slow the bud development process. Luckily, even if the flower buds are killed by cold temperatures, the health of the plant should not be affected.

Happy Gardening,

Sue

First a howling blizzard woke us,

Then the rain came down to soak us,

And now before the eye can focus – Crocus!

– Lilja Rogers, New Hampshire poet, 1901-1998

The first week that I see crocus blooming in the garden, I start off my horticulture class by showing this poem with a picture of the little bloomers. It’s such a wonderful harbinger of spring!

Not that crocus necessarily need warm weather to put on a show. Sometimes there is snow on the ground when the time is right for blooming - but they bloom on, giving us hope that spring is just around the corner.

I don’t think that snow on the crocus will be an issue this year, even though I’m showing my crocus slide a week earlier than I did last year.

I spent a few hours in my garden today wearing only a hoodie. I’m cutting back ornamental grasses, raking up piles of leaves and debris that were blown into the landscape beds, and doing general cleanup. I’ve barely put a dent in these tasks, but it sure feels good to be out there doing something! If it is as nice as thay say it will be this week, I’ll probably get around to turning the compost. I should also dormant spray my roses and fruit trees.

These are tasks that I usually do in March. But since I don’t know what the March weather will look like, I’m happy to be getting them done now. Here is a list of things you can be doing in the garden on nice February and March days.

Happy Gardening,

Sue

I was making Italian wedding soup in the crock pot for dinner tonight when I decided to pick some kale from the garden to use (in place of spinach or escarole) in my recipe. Still picking greens from your garden, you ask? Credit the warm winter we’ve been having! And kale is the hardiest of the bunch.

I’m also picking calamondin oranges, Citrus mitis,  from my indoor orange tree. The little oranges are so plentiful that they are weighing down the branches. I picked a few, to lighten the load, but left more than half of them on the tree. My neighborhood book club meets here in a couple of days, and I want the literary ladies to be amazed at the small tree loaded with fruit. After that, I’ll be making orange marmalade.

My last culinary surprise involves some rosemary cuttings. I bought a plastic packet of rosemary sprigs in the produce section at the grocery store, but only used half in my recipe. I stuck the remaining cuttings in water and placed them in the greenhouse window over my kitchen sink, to stay fresh. I forgot about them until now, a month later, and they have rooted. It is not typical to have woody plant cutting root from a grocery store packet, as I said in a recent post about rooting basil. But anything can happen!

It’s an extra exciting treat to have fresh produce from your own house and garden in mid-February!

Happy Gardening,

Sue

It’s always exciting to look through the seed catalogs and dream of what you want to plant in the garden this year. But with so many choices, how can you decide what to order? It can all seem overwhelming! Here are a few tips on how to approach your seed ordering in an orderly fashion.

1.   Decide what you want to grow.

List the plants you eat most of or can’t live without. Include items that you plan to dry, can or freeze. If you eat a lot of something, you might want to try growing it.

But also consider what is available locally for a reasonable price. This may influence whether you will devote space to a particular vegetable. For example, I love sweet corn and eat a lot of it. But it takes a lot of space in the garden to grow it. So this is one crop I choose to buy instead.

I  grow a great variety of greens, basil, and Italian parsley because I don’t want to pay several dollars per bunch for them at the market. Interesting hot peppers, heirloom tomatoes and easy things like zucchini, green beans and radishes are always worth growing, to me.

2.   From your list, decide which crops are best grown from seed.

Some things grow better direct-seeded rather than transplanted. Legumes, which include beans and peas; vining crops like squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and melons; spinach, salad greens, chard and kale; root crops like radishes, carrots and beets; herbs like parsley, cilantro, dill; and corn. So if these plants are on your wish list, you should order seeds.

Some things grow best as transplants, like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants; and some of the cabbage relatives including broccoli and cauliflower.  If you only need a plant or two of a certain pepper or tomato variety, buy them as transplants from the plant nursery. If you want a dozen broccoli plants, it’s cheaper to start them indoors from a seed packet.

3.   Check your seed supplies to see what you have left over from last year.

If you’re like me, you have partially planted or unplanted seed packets from the past few years. It’s worth checking these out before ordering in a new stash. Most seed is viable for 2 to 3 years, but this can vary widely according to the type of seed. You could do a germination test to find out if your seed is still good. Here’s how:

Count out 10 seeds and place them in a row on a damp paper towel. Roll the seeds up in the towel and place it in a plastic bag. Leave it in a warm place. Check it after a few days, and again after a week. Count the seeds that have germinated. If eight seeds are alive, your packet is approximately 80 percent viable; go ahead and use it. If only a few germinated, you should re-order, or sow very heavily if you just need a few plants.

4.   Peruse the seed catalogs and list what you want to buy.

The first time through a catalog, I make lots of black circles around things that sound interesting. I fold over corners to mark the spot. I return to the interesting plants and reconsider, X-ing some out. At some point, it’s time to compile all of the best choices onto a “master list”. Here is where you’ll notice if you came up with 10 kinds of beans to try and no beets. You can compare varieties and prices from your favorite catalogs, and eventually come up with your tentative list of seeds to buy.

5.   Decide how many plants you can really fit into the space you have.

Of course, that would be a spot that gets at least eight hours of sun, where the soil drains well, and with access to water.

If you have questions about how to space your vegetable plants, I described my method in this post about Planning the Vegetable Garden last year.

6.   Refine your list accordingly, and place your orders.

Be sure to try a few new items each year, and add a few flowers to plant amongst the vegetables to attract pollinizing insects. Consider growing open pollinated flowers and vegetables if you want to start saving your own seeds. And consider switching to organically grown seeds, to help sustain the health of your soil, our ecosystems, and your family!

Do you have a favorite seed catalog or a special way to organize your seed buying? Leave a comment below.

Happy Gardening!

It’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (GBBD) again. Thanks heavens! This is a great reminder for me to post a blog. I’ve been hit-or-miss at posting since I broke my collar bone last spring. It still hasn’t healed completely, and this has really restricted my gardening efforts. Whch has made me loath to blog. Not logical, but true! So the good news is, I’m blogging today in honor of GBBD, which happens the 15th of each month.

The bad news is, there are only two things blooming today. And one of them is a repeat of what was blooming last month. That would be the Christmas rose, or Helleborus niger, pictured above. So if you still aren’t convinced that you need a few of these beauties to spice up the winter garden, think again.

In the front yard, I have another Hellebore, commonly called the Lenten rose, Helleborus orientalis Brandywine(TM), that is taller and later blooming than the Christmas rose. It blooms in early spring. Both of these perennials grow and bloom well in dry shade under trees - once they are established, of course. And the handsome evergreen foliage looks good in the other three seasons, too. So there is no excuse not to try one, especially if you have a difficult dry shade spot in the garden!

This is witch hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia ’Arnold Promise’. The yellow winter blossoms look terrific in front of the blue spruce tree, don’t you think? This shrub can bloom any time from December thru February, depending on the weather. It is a vase-shaped plant growing slowly to about 12 or 15 feet tall, and has interesting leaves with fair yellowish fall color. An extract of the witch hazel plant is used medicinally as a skin tonic, but ‘Arnold Promise’ is mainly used as a landacape plant that looks good in every season.

Happy Gardening!