2008 Retrospective

Kitchen Garden 2008

I walked away from blogging this past year, but I can honestly say that you didn't miss much. It was a short season; the beans and sweet peas did really well, but dahlias and tomatoes were a bust. Vital statistics for this season:

* Last frost: May 20th
* First frost: October 12
* Duration: about 130 days (30 less than average)
* MVP: 'Royal Burgundy' beans, with sweet peas a close second
* Best Rookie: Dahlia 'Ruskin Andrea'
* Most Promising Rookie: drip-irrigation hoses
* Headed back to the minors: 'Santa Cruz' oregano, eggplant, okra, 'Red Samurai' carrots

It's been a challenging year outside of the garden, so a lot of my post-season tasks fell by the wayside. Most prominently, the dahlias tubers didn't get dug up or stored, and with eighteen inches of snow and two weeks of below-freezing temperatures, I may have to restart my collection from scratch. We'll see if anything makes it.

Gardening tasks currently on my list:

* Forcing daffodils, hyacinths, and an amaryllis indoors
* Bleaching last year's cloches and pots

What I'm looking forward to in 2009:

* More fruit, including currants and gooseberries for jam
* 'Merlin' beets (I really enjoy growing beets now)
* 'Sharry Baby,' an oncidium that I'm determined to buy at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in February

It's all snow and ice outdoors, but hey, I can dream! Happy new year to all!

It wasn't too late, after all

Daffodil 'Grand Soleil d'Or'

Another bulb update: all of those fall-planted bulbs that I forgot about until after frost hit last year have definitely made it through. The daffodils are gorgeous-- having gone through something like 150 bulbs last fall, I still finding myself wishing I'd planted more. The alliums are up to eighteen inches, and the crown imperials, having just broken ground last week, are already vying to catch up to them in height.

The only slight disappointment has been the Snake's Head Fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris)-- it looks like a few of them aren't going to sprout. I'll probably want to move them around at the end of the season, after they've bloomed. I'm still really looking forward to flowers from the plants that made it-- we saw some in bloom at the tulip festival (in a sunnier bed) and it made me even more anxious to see them in my own garden.

Besides the new additions, previous years' plantings have reappeared, notably Tulipa greigii 'Toronto,' one of my favorites. 'Salome,' one of the first daffodils I planted, has mostly disappeared except for one persistent bulb that has been the only one to pop up for the last two years running.

The cherry tree looks as if it will bloom this week, coinciding, as usual, with the beginning of rhubarb season. This weekend is my usual planting-out date, but the seedlings in the sun room aren't quite ready for prime time, having been started later than usual.

Not too late, though. Anyway, this has been another fairly late spring (like last year), so it will all even out in the end.*

--
* - "Eventually, I believe, everything evens out. Long ago an asteroid hit our planet and killed our dinosaurs. But in the future, maybe we'll go to another planet and kill their dinosaurs." --Jack Handey

Vacation's over!

Primroses

It feels like I've hardly had time to think about gardening this past winter-- this is the first year that I've approached a gardening season feeling completely unprepared. It's not that the usual winter tasks didn't get accomplished. Seeds have been ordered, pots have been bleached and cleaned, potting mix has been purchased in abundance. But somehow, I'm adrift. Maybe it's a sort of gardening mid-life crisis? I guess spring will tell.

Last year's garden: a post-mortem:

• The radicchio finally formed loose heads! There is still quite a bit of it in the garden, as the husband does not share my enthusiasm for its bitterness.
  
  
• The pumpkins never ripened fully, and started to rot. If you can imagine 75 pounds' worth of partly-mushy pumpkins leaking their slimy orange pumpkin guts all over the lawn-- well, as much as I wanted those pumpkins, it was pretty funny.
  
  
• Remember those bulbs that I forgot to plant on time last year? So far, the daffodils, at least, are coming up just fine. The fritillarias haven't popped up yet, but I'm definitely seeing some alliums. Happily, 'Splendid Cornelia,' the hyacinth that I forced last winter, has also come up in its new home in a patio container. It may edge out the daffodils as first bulb to bloom this year.

Early-spring gardening:

• We've had a couple of weeks of beautiful weather, and as a result, the second giant clump of rhubarb has finally been divided. Three of the seven resulting clumps were adopted by a co-worker; two more are still looking for homes. I also have several French sorrel plants in search of a new home.
  
  
• Sweet peas and snow peas have been planted on time! I ordered particular sweet peas from a particular vendor this year and was really looking forward to them, and they somehow lost my order! So the replacement sweet pea seeds that I ended up grabbing at the store are some standard variety, but I'm really looking forward to the snow peas, which are a new-to-me variety called 'Carouby de Maussane.'
  
  
• Meet my very first orchid! It's an oncidium, probably 'Sweet Sugar.' So far, it's been in flower for about a month. If I can keep it alive, there's another oncidium that I have my eye on.
  
  
• I will spare you the introduction to my first David Austen rose, as it is currently nekkid (in a bare-root sort of way). I'm planning on acquiring one more, but I've got to find a place for it, first. One of my 2008 garden resolutions is to take better care of the roses this year. I've armed myself with horticultural oil, fungicide, and a fresh bottle of pyrethrin, but already have a nagging suspicion that it will take more work and more chemicals than I can stomach.
  
  
• The Northwest Flower & Garden Show has come and gone. It was my first year attending this huge PNW garden event. A few photos are posted here. The show featured dozens and dozens of plant vendors. I, of course, walked out with nothing but more frakking dahlia tubers :-/
  
  
• Finally, to explain the photo of the day: I did not grow these primroses. They came from the local nursery. However, I am attempting to stratify three flats' worth of primrose seed this year. Last year, my wintersown container of primroses was one of only two failures, so I've divided my containers into three separate batches and will try different methods to get the seeds to germinate. These aren't just any primroses, by the way-- they are mostly species auriculas, along with a batch of candelabra primroses. This task may prove to be beyond my skill level, but if even one of my three trial groups yields plants, I'll be thrilled.

Bullet-point posts are always random and exhausting, aren't they? Well, I'm sorry to unload all of that in one post, but it was time to get the blog all caught up. The 2008 growing season has arrived, and experience is beginning to teach me that there will not be time to wax nostalgic over past moments once things start taking off!

2007: A Retrospective

2007: April through December

Every year, I try to keep track of what the garden looked like from month to month, and compile a photo montage for my own reference. Next year, I need to start doing this for all three of the major gardens-- this one plus the veggie plot out back and the cutting garden.

One thing I notice is that the garden doesn't seem as colorful this year as it did in 2006, when the front bed was dominated by zinnias, nasturtiums, gem marigolds, and dahlias. In future years, I will have to make sure to put more flowers into the front berm.

Structurally, this year I lengthened the center bed and added the trellis in the front bed. That trellis worked wonderfully and wasn't much trouble to build-- next year I think I may make one or two more.

The bare earth in the first photo reminds me that spring is around the corner! Last spring seems so far away now-- where did I find the time to start all those seeds? Next year will present new challenges, in any case-- I've lost use of the south-facing windowsills that I usually use to grow seedlings, and will have to resort to experimental methods. It's going to be an interesting seed-starting season.

All told, though, I'm feeling relatively optimistic where the garden is concerned. Winter sowing is coming up! And the approaching solstice means that we're almost halfway through the season of darkness. I will be thrilled to get some daylight back!

Looking back on things, 2007 was a good year for the garden. But with a little luck, 2008 will be even better.

To compare montages from previous years, click here.

Catalog season

Catalogs

We're all inundated with catalogs at this time of the year, right? Since the start of November, it seems like I've received holiday mailings from every company I've bought or received gifts through in the past five years. Most of them go straight into the recycle bin with a disdainful huff, but when it comes to the new season's seed catalogs, my attitude takes a complete 360.

I'm sure that seed companies know that by sending catalogs out in winter, they're hitting home gardeners up at our most vulnerable hour, when we're tired of ice and bare branches and desperately craving thoughts of warmer and more bountiful days to come. To be honest, I have enough seed stored away for a few years' worth of crops, but when the catalogs arrive, I can never resist treating myself to a few new varieties.

My favorite catalogs have tons of information on germination and cultivation of different crops-- after I'm done shopping from them, I keep them around as reference material and find myself turning to them at various stages throughout the growing season. I like colorful plant pictures as much as the next gardener, but I've come to be suspicious of catalogs with a photo-to-text ratio of less than fifty percent. I mean, they say that a picture's worth a thousand words, but unless those thousand words include germination instructions, dates-to-harvest, disease resistances, and so forth, I'd might as well be staring at photos of brightly-wrapped paperweights.

If you were thinking about giving your favorite urban gardener one of those gift paperweights, by the way, you might want to take a look at the You Grow Girl 2008 calendar instead. It is informational, beautifully designed, and full of fabulous photography. I've ordered mine! Admittedly, I don't know your favorite gardener personally, and it may well be that they really want a gift paperweight. (I suppose). I'm just making the suggestion.

By the way, a few posts back I mentioned Folia, a garden journal/community website that's in beta testing at the moment. At the time, there was a waiting list for new accounts, but there's a membership drive going on at the moment such that existing members can give out instant-access invitations to other gardeners. If you're reading this and interested in trying it out, leave a comment. I'm really excited to be able to share the opportunity, so don't be shy! I'm generally awful about replying to comments, but this is one thing that I can promise I'll get back to you about quickly.

That said, as this might well be my last post of the year-- happy holidays, everyone! See you in 2008!

Oh c***, I forgot the bulbs!

Crown Imperial

It happens to me every year-- in the rush of things that have to be accomplished after frost hits, something gets lost in the shuffle. This year, it was the spring bulbs. I've had them sitting around for over a month-- the crown imperials that I've been after for years, along with a massive quantity of daffodils.

To add to the calamity, the local grocery store put its bulbs on clearance this past week ($1.00 per package!), virtually forcing me to buy the alliums I had my eye on earlier in the season. (Uh-huh). As the cashier was ringing up my pile, she gave me a funny look and asked, "Can these really still be planted out?"

Well, I have my own doubts about whether or not it's still safe to plant out bulbs, but over the weekend, I went ahead and did it anyway. Although it's pretty cold, the ground isn't frozen yet-- the biggest difficulty in getting them out has been the non-stop rain that generally hits Western Washington at about the same time as frost. I've planted bulbs late before with good results, and feel pretty confident that most of them will come up just fine in the spring.

If not, I will report back in a few months. I'll be sad if they rot, but they won't keep anyway-- and hopefully, blogging my (possible) loss will serve as a caveat to anyone else who, like me, finds themself suffering from forgotten-bulb syndrome.

How sweet it is

Carrots - 'Purple Haze' and 'Nantes'

Last year, after being very impressed with myself for having grown my first carrot, I mentioned that I was going to try a variety called "Purple Haze." In the spirit of continuing to show off my carrots, here is "Purple Haze" mixed in with more of the Nantes type pictured in last year's photo. Pretty cool-looking, eh? Root crops are supposed to turn sweeter after frost; these post-frost carrots certainly do seem sweeter than their mid-season counterparts. I wish I'd planted fall beets!

Elsewhere in the vegetable garden, the sorrel is starting to succumb to the cold weather, after all; I'm debating whether to pull out my extra plants now, or wait until spring to give them away. I'm also worried about the leeks; they look fine so far, but I don't know how winter-hardy the variety I planted is. They're too small to use yet, though, so the decision to leave them in is a no-brainer. Finally, the radicchio is still not heading. I may pull out some of the plants and move them to an area that gets more sunlight. If that doesn't work, I'll be starting from scratch with a more sure-heading variety in the spring.

In the flower beds: last week, I cut back the dead dahlias to let the tubers cure. They're due to be dug up and stored next weekend. While I was messing around in the flowerbeds, I put in my fall-planted bulbs and rearranged the perennials to try and "fix" my plant height issues-- next year, I don't want to have to deal with two-foot larkspurs buried behind four-foot high dahlias again. Here are the before and after shots. The difference doesn't look very impressive right now, especially since the dahlias have been cut down and the annuals taken out, but by spring the improvement should be marked.

As a final note, we pruned the grapes this past weekend. Do not try this at home! Grapes are normally pruned in spring, but since the recent frosts killed off most of the foliage, and since my husband doesn't like the way that the vines trap humidity against the garage, we now have two naked, scrawny trunks on either side of a wooden arbor, defenseless against the impending cold. Husband wants to move the grapes next year; I think they're going to be too much trouble to move, and would prefer replacing them with a more flavorful variety, or maybe even wine grapes.

Even though I'm not very fond of red seedless, I have to admit that owning our own grapevines has increased my interest in and respect for viticulture. The grapes in particular have taught me to be a vigilant and merciless pruner; every year, we cut them way back except for a very few of the strongest vines from the previous year, and the plants always seem to bounce back with increased vigor. Even though we neglected the vines after pruning this past year and let the birds get most of the year's bounty, in a way, the business of pruning is its own reward. There is a calm to it, a sense of purposeful effort that I enjoy.

There are still bulbs to plant, tubers to store, and gardening supplies to be cleaned. I keep thinking that the gardening season (and thus, my blogging season) is done, but it still seems like there's always something to do. I once joked to a greenhouse grower that I couldn't have a greenhouse and do the four-season gardening thing because I needed the winter break! But there really isn't a break-- just a slowdown. And I think I like it that way.