not quite planting time

It's been too cold to plant. I mean, it's been really cold.

Giant kettle of soup cold.

Stodgy-meal cold.

I've even turned the heat on for the past few nights so Piper won't think Winter is back. Heat on in May! Good gracious.

Despite the weather, watching the spring wildflowers appearing and the trees blooming and beginning to leaf out is endlessly exciting.

Unfortunately, the cold nights and overcast days have meant a struggle for some, like these Solomon's Seal plants you saw earlier:

These greening and fast-moving days make me feel I'm late getting the vegetable garden started, but in fact it is still too cold for the things I intend to plant. That said, between the rainy spells there's plenty of prep work to be done in the gardens before anything is planted. A couple of weeks ago I marked out the six upper rows in the terrace vegetable garden, and my helper rough-dug the rows and reinstalled a section of garden fence we had taken down in the autumn.

This is what the rows look like after the soil is just turned over...I think you can see a few rocks there?

So I have to go over each row, foot by foot, sifting the soil through my fingers and tossing the rocks into a bucket. I got one row done last week, on a day when the rain held off til evening. This row is ready to plant as soon as the weather warms up:

Only five more rows to go!

Then there's a new little experimental raised bed in the works, for a hill of either squash or cukes - something that will grow on a trellis. It doesn't look like much yet:

This little bed is on a stony bit of slope and I am trying to support the downhill edge of the bed with rocks sifted from the planting rows. A first layer of organic material has been piled up around a 5-gallon bucket, and there will be some soil added to the top. The bucket has holes drilled in it near the bottom, and my plan is to use it as a waterer, to help roots find deeper moisture in the summer.

I don't plan to buy much seed this year - maybe just summer squash and pole beans. I've saved seed from some of last year's success stories: the candy roaster squash, suyo long cucumbers, and popcorn. I also have Egyptian "walking onions" and field peas ordered last Autumn. All of the above came from Sow True Seed - the Appalachian seed company I learned about from Tipper at the Blind Pig and the Acorn blog. You may recall that Tipper kindly allowed this Yankee to participate several times in her annual seed-testing project, which has been great fun.

This year, Tipper has become a Sow True Seed affiliate: here is Tipper's brand-new affiliate link to the Sow True Seed online catalog, in case you'd care to visit. I really appreciate what these folks are doing to preserve and distribute heirloom varieties.

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How about you? How are your gardens - or garden plans - or next year's garden plans, for those readers living in the southern hemisphere - coming along?

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tuesday tidbits

During the recent week of rain, the amazing epimedium continued to produce masses of tiny gem-like flowers:

 The flowers are passing, but look at what the leaves are doing!

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In other perennial news, the little wild ginger plant I added last summer was one of the first plants to return this year. It's leaves looked exceptionally lush against a palette of Forest Floor:

Charming, isn't it? 

One day I made a little line drawing:

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Several readers have asked about Project Windowbox.

Thanks for asking! Here's an update.

The design decisions were easy, thanks to all the good advice I received here. I am very grateful! This is the kind of thing that can hang fire for years while I hem and haw. The choices made:

1) sturdy white plastic boxes

2) continuous wooden supports built across the long walls

After a long and fruitless online search, I found boxes locally - a nice surprise. I also ordered gallons of a cedar-oil-based wood preservative, because the exterior walls of the porch needed to be protected before installing the boxes.

No big deal.

My occasional hired helper and I could work together and get it done, lickety-split.

On the right:
product applied but not yet absorbed.

Then...for nearly three weeks my occasional hired helper and I experienced a baffling series of miscommunications. By the time it was straightened out, the rainy season (it really has felt like an actual season, with soup and tea and a barn coat that never quite dried out before I had to put it on again) had begun.

So, for the past two weeks we've been working as often as weather and schedules permit. Working on several now-overdue tasks.
Working hard.

Current status: most of the porch now has two coats. The gable peak has one. A third overall coat may be needed; we'll see. Either way, fingers crossed the painting will be finished by next week. We finally had a sunny day yesterday, and another today, but my helper has not been available...so, no progress yet this week. Yes, I could crawl up that ladder and do the gable myself, but moving and setting the higher ladder is hard for me to do. So I'll wait.

Meanwhile, one more piece fell into place on Saturday, when I found a source for the potting soil recommended to me by a blogger who gardens like I can only dream of gardening. I've never been so excited about the opportunity to buy dirt. I'm really pushing the boat out on this project! 

Soon...I'll keep you posted!

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P.S.

I'm sure LeShodu would like to thank you for your kind birthday greetings, and especially the suggestion of "special carrots."

"'Special' is a unit of measurement, right?
Is it equivalent to a pound?
Or is it one carrot for each of my 12 years?"

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tiny marvels

Last June I attended the Town Library Plant and Bake Sale. It's a community event; contributors donate thinnings from their own gardens or flats of seedlings from their greenhouses.

One plant I chose was an epimedium.

I planted it at the base of a young oak tree surrounded by ferns, and by July it looked three times it's original size and seemed quite happy:

July 2015

In Autumn, it's leaves took on a semi-coppery sheen,

and when the "last" snow melted (quite recently, and possibly not the last at all), the remaining leaves looked like this:

As my world begins to green up, I've been keeping a close eye on the many, many places where I planted perennials last year, hoping for signs that the plants wintered well and will be back and thriving this year.

Last week, I was thrilled to find a glimpse of green at the base of that oak tree. A single stalk, elegantly arched over a cluster of deep pink buds:

And then another:

Just a few days later, there were more green stalks, unfurling, and many buds:

And now the first flower has opened!

I had to almost stand on my head for that picture, but I wanted you to get a sense of how threadlike these stems are, and how tiny the flowers. (In case it's not clear, those pink logs to the left are my fingertips.)

When I bought this plant, it was past flowering, so these flowers are a complete and wonderful surprise.

I have an illustrated list of many epimedium varieties, kindly given to me at a nursery last year. At some point, I will locate that list - probably when I am looking for a spool of thread or a screwdriver or a phone number - and then perhaps I can identify the plant with some certainty. Meanwhile, tentative identification: Epimedium alpinum 'Rubrum.'

Whatever it's botanical name, it's an unlikely-looking gem of a plant to appear and bloom at this changeable time of year. I'm thrilled to bits that it's back!

What happy returns have you found in your gardens this year?

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