Successes and Failures 2014, Part 1

 Cet article en français.

The garden lost in that September fog.

Similar article of last year:

Year 2013

Hélène:

I started writing this article at the beginning of October. Early for it, isn't it? But the weather's been telling me this year's gardening season would end sooner than usual, whichever way I'd try to postpone it. Speaking of which, I was lucky enough, with my closed-in garden, with its 8 feet wood fence, because the hard frost that hit most of Quebec province in mid-September didn't make a dent in my garden. I didn't even have time to cover anything; I learned of it at 9PM - way too late in the evening to take any measure. I didn't even loose my basil! But I know a lot of other gardens didn't fare as well. Sad.

The big tomatoes are the cultivar
"Cosmonaute Volkov", the smaller
ones are "Mini Roma" and my usual,
"White Currant". The two firsts
won't come back in my garden; they
don't produce much and often have
bruised or mischappen fruits. Volkov
at least is delicious. Mini Roma is quite
forgettable, unfortunately.

Failures:

And I think that's the first reason for one of my failures (otherwise, the season was superb) : the tomatoes. Even if the frost didn't kill my tomato plants , since mid-August, nights have been very cold, too cold actually for the good maturing of tomatoes. Sources say you need a nightly temperature of above 10 degrees Celsius for tomatoes to mature (some even state it's closer to 12 degrees). 

Small harvest of mint, "Sunshine" squash (yep, only one) and limes.

 Strangely, my mint didn't fare well either; the leaves got attacked by the fungus Puccinia Menthae, that causes mint rust. One explanation might be that the cherry tree above the mint as grown and is making more and more shadow, preventing a good evaporation of rain water. In a humid environment like that, the fungus spreads. It's unfortunate that harvest hasn't been good since mint is pretty much my base for herbal tea throughout the winter.

I was afraid I wouldn't have a good bean harvest either. I planted a new potato variety - I planted them right in front of my bean teepee. These potatoes were planted in May and became so big that by June - the time where I plant my beans - these beans where never able to pierce the dense vegetation the potatoes produced.

I harvested a couple of dried-on-the-plant beans every day, from July throughout October. Here are "Scarlet Runner Bean" (black and purple) and "Jacob's Cattle" (white and pink). The one missing was "Painted Lady", lost in the potatoes' shadow.

Successes:

But beans have been a success nonetheless since I planted them here and there in my garden, and not only on the bean teepee in the back of the potato patch. Moreover, this season's cool air pushed them to dry out in bigger quantities than my average harvest, years where cold come down fast, preventing the beans to dry up ont the plant, and I can only harvest fresh beans that I have to freeze. So, luckily this year, I'll have more dried beans versus fresh beans - a ratio that's usually reversed.

Here's half of the potato harvest. Last year, I "forgot" some Norland potatoes in the ground, so these made plants too. That gave me two types of potatoes this year. Norland are the red ones with white flesh while the Golden Rush are yellow with yellow flesh. We used them majorly in soups and potato salads.

Usual strawberries in the bowl, 
Alpine variety on the rock.

Fruits did very well, even thought my peach tree only produced 3 peaches (I need to give it fertilizer, the soil just isn't rich enough for a good fruition, observation validated by 2 years of nothing). It's still worth mentionning that peach trees, like some of the old apple varieties, produce a good harvest only every two years, or more in the case of peach trees.

However, the succession of berries worked well starting with strawberries, followed by juneberries and ending with raspberries (peaches usually come around the same time as raspberries or a bit earlier). "Ending" is actually an overstatement since the raspberries produce until the frosts (not in amazing quantities, but a couple here and there) and one variety of strawberries bears fruits up into autumn. I have two types of strawberries: my usual, which produces a good 3 weeks of spring harvest, and the Alpine variety, that makes less fruits but produce them in spring and Autumn, when the temperatures drop again, around the mid-September.

Gold raspberries and alpine strawberries together in September.
(Two tiny, edible borage flowers are posing as decoration.)

 I didn't bother planting groundcherries this year, but cucumbers and finally - Finally! - I was successful with them! They gave me so much fruits that I even managed to make a jar of pickles! I did everything to ensure success. I planted them South (with a dash of shade however), directly in a bag of sheep manure. That bag was great to keep enough water and warmth for the plants. I placed stalks with twine for the plants to crawl up. It's a wonderful victory with these, my first since 6 years on and off of trial.

One plump cuke, bruised by the colds of September rounds up a small harvest of tomatoes and alpine strawberries.

New surprises:

Surprises are becoming rare (I've worked this piece of garden for 6 years, now) but there are a couple of things worth mentionning.

First with the tiny creatures - insects, molluscs, etc. - who were very visible, two in particular. The bumblebees (first picture, with a wasp) and snails.

This picture shows the differences between bumblebees and wasps very well.

Hidden in the heart of a dwarf hosta, this snail is far from being a singular occurence in the garden. Take note, though, it looks big but it's in a variety of dwarf hosta called "Mouse Ear".

Many varieties of daylillies have flowered without precedence this year, some because they were planted two years ago and having taken the last year to establish themselves properly, can now flower with abandon; one variety I repositionned and finally, another one just decided to give its 110% !

Giving its 110%, here's a variety I don't have the name of anymore, from a specialty nursery that doesn't exist anymore... I nicknamed it "The Bridesmaid".

The red daylilies in the back bloom well every year. As for the two varieties at the front, of cream complexion, they have been planted two years ago. They bloomed very well this year, and will surely expand in the years to come.

Finally, I nicknamed this one "The Garden's Angel" or "The Empress", it also comes from that closed nursery.

Here's her story: 

Once upon a time, there was a daylily of wondrous beauty. Dashes of peach and sunshine, sprinkles of pink colored her satiny petals, giving her allures of a garden angel. The owner of this unfortunate one took the sad decision of placing it between two thujas. Even thought the daylily was in full sunshine, the conifers grew and grew and suffocated the poor flower. The first year, she made 3 flowers. The second, only one. The following, none. The Garden Angel had disappeared, leaving only a tuft of scrawny leaves in its place.

And so, last year, the gardener finally noticed the slow agony of the beautiful daylily. Luckily, she found a new, special spot just for the flower. In little less than a heartbeat and 3 shovelings, the daylily was in that perfect place again! And this year, in celebration, the Garden Angel came back in full force, strutting her beautiful flowers once again! 

The End

October blooms in my garden

Cet article en français.

Louise :

If, like me, you're blessed with mature trees surrounding your home, you can enjoy their autumn splendor.

In comparison, the few species of annual and perennial plants still in bloom are somewhat dwarfed by these giants' magnificience, but they're worthy to behold!

By offering you a quick tour of my garden, I hope to help you discover or simply remember a few interesting choices of plants blooming in fall, in Quebec. And to wrap it up, I even put aside a small surprise in photo.

Let's start our visit in the backyard. Here, we discover bright rose asters in a sheltered nook. They are contrasting with the grey-blue color of a Blue False Indigo (Baptisia Australis), the red stems of Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens Glandulifera), one of them still sporting a single pink flower, and a few white flowers on a phlox. On the following photo, taken in the misty morning air, you can see the Himalayan Balsams still in bloom, their stems not quite red yet (this snap was taken at the end of September).  The small green seed pods are ready to explode at the slightest touch, scattering their seeds in all directions. There's a very short video on Wikipedia, showing this amazing phenomenon.
 

The picture on the left, the bright green, deeply cut foliage belongs to Herb Robert (Geranium Robertianum). This annual or bisannual plant grows very well in Quebec, in full sun as well as in part shade, and seeds itself abundantly. It produces cute little pink flowers all season long, from spring to killing frosts. We can make a healthy infusion of its leaves.

Come autumn, I let the falling tree leaves cover Herb Robert plants entirely. This way, these small plants remain green and alive under this protection. Until late in autumn, I can get out, dig a little in the brown autumn litter and pick up just enough fresh Herb Robert leaves to make myself a good cup of tea.

These abundant small-double white flowers with their butter-yellow hearts are the blooms of Kalimeris Pinnatifida "Hortensis". Hardy to canadian zone 3, this perennial can reach 90cm (3 feet) high and is easy to grow, blooming from mid-summer for three months and more, even in a partly shaded area, although it tends to spread and crawl in such a location. Its flowers are not afraid of a few frosts. It grows to a good size but it's not invasive, at least, not in my garden.

At your left, these small white, daisy-type flowers are of an unknown cultivar of Mayweed (Chrysanthemum Parthenium). They are short-lived perennials and seed themselves generously. 

Some varieties of Mayweeds can bloom abundantly in open part-shade during a long period. I once had a double-flower cultivar that bloomed non stop from the beginning of summer right through autumn frosts.

The one species of Mayweed inhabitating my garden nowadays doesn't start blooming before the end of July and most plants will stop flowering one or two months later, but occasionnally, one individual will take its time and will still make its show in October ! 

In the front yard, there is full sun that allow abundant and spectacular blooms, even in fall.

But let's start with a more humble perennial. Here, a plant of Musk-Mallow (Malva moshata) is still making the effort of blooming in a neglected spot. It's because I cut back its wilted blooms to avoid it to spread its seeds. Musk-Mallow leaves and seeds occasionally make an edible addition to our salads. As this photo has been taken very early in the morning, the flowers are not opened yet.

On this photo, let's take a look at one of my flower beds, located near the public sidewalk. It's a huge New-England Aster (Aster Novae Angliae or Symphyotrichum Novae Angliae, cultivar "Alma Potschke"), making a big show with its vibrant-rose flowers. Some other cultivars have colours as bright as this one, pure white or bright purple, for instance. Others present pastel shades. When the space allows it, teaming up aster cultivars of constrasting colours in the same bed can be very eye-catching.

Some species of autumn asters can be only 15cm (6in) high, acting as groundcovers. I have white ones from this category, but their last flowers died a few days before these photos were taken. Others are 60cm (2 feet) high, and still others can reach a respectful size and 90cm (3 feet) high, as shown in this photo.

At my Aster's foot, Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckias Hirta) are done with their blooms, but I left in place their stems and black seed heads. If wild birds run out of food at the end of winter, they'll come to eat these seeds. But some will fall anyway and will make a more or less dense mat of new plants. In other words, I may end up with many more plants than I care to cultivate...

This big aster plant makes its show in a flower bed situated  near the public sidewalk. I presented you this very same bed in my  last article on spring bulbs. Here I take the liberty of reproducing two photos from this article, so you can compare this same spot at three different periods of the year. 

First photo : at the very beginning of april.

Here, I planted my crocuses in bunches of

different colours. They are so early that the

lawn didn't have the time to turn green again.

As you can see, it's impossible to detect the presence

of my aster plant, because the first stems didn't start to show up, yet.

                      

Second photo, same spot, mid-may.

Every crocus bloom is gone, but the slender leaves are there, lying amongst the bright blue muscari flowers. We also see the big, fat leaf of a tulip bulb that will bloom only in June. Behind, daffodils are 

in their full moment of glory.

In July, Giant onions (Allium Giganteum) will replace them.

In summer, still in this same flower bed, five varieties of daylilies bloomed in succession from mid-June to the end of September (sadly, I don't have a snap of this period to present you with). As for the Black-eyed Susans, they started flowering around the 20th of July, if I remember well. A few plants of pink Coneflowers (Echinacea) completed the picture. Nothing exotic, as the choice of summer blooming species goes, but I reached my goal : to get continuous blooms from spring to fall.

This third and last photo present you the same Aster clump, in the same flower bed, giving me an artistic bonus in December 2013: it morphed itself into a delicate ice sculpture with the help of an icestorm.

Final Touch daylily.

A little closer to the house, the very last daylily cultivar to bloom in my garden, this year (it was still blooming at the beginning of November, in fact), is called "Final Touch". But it's the first time ever it makes flowers so late. It produced numerous flower buds on 120cm (4 foot) high scapes. It is its fifth year in this spot of my garden. 

Usually, "Autumn King" is the last  to bloom. It beats "Autumn Blaze" (red flowers on 60 to 80cm  scapes) and "Bitsy" (yellow flowers on 90cm scapes), which is one parent of the famous "Stella de Oro", by the way. All these cultivars are in bloom for a long time, 2 or 3 months - "Bitsy" being a rebloomer, with 2 to 3 blooming periods a year, is the first one, beginning very early in the spring.

Many of the fall blooming daylilies have a common sin : in cold weather, their flowers don't open completely. "Final Touch" is not the exception. But during milder day, the show of its' big, bicolor blooms redeems it completely, in my humble opinion. By the way, their hues may vary quite a lot. Sometimes, the petals will be of a solid, intense rose, as shown in this photo, and other times, they will turn towards orange. 

Every year, I allow some wild aster plants to bloom among my more civilized perennials. These rascals invited themselves without permission many years ago. I just happen to have a sweet spot for them, with their small but abundant flowers, usually powder blue, occasionnaly white, even though they threaten my garden with their invasive behaviour. They produce infinite quantities of seeds, you see, and the obvious way to keep them in check is to cut down every flower head before the seeds are formed and ripe.

This clump of Mums, (Chrysanthemums "Mary Stoker"), which you were already acquainted with in a previous article, has no reason to envy my asters' good looks. Here, the numerous burnt-orange blooms are teaming with Showy Stonecrops (Sedum Spectabile or Hylotelephium spectabile) whose flower heads (left side of the photo) have a russet colour. Note the numerous seed heads of Black-eyed Susans, just behind the Stonecrops. Again at the left, but further behind, here is the surprise plant that I wanted to show you : its' leaves are a pale blue-grey and its' flowers are a very pale yellow. It is...

... a brocoli, that I - involuntarily - allowed to bolt, because I waited too long before harvesting its head. Until it was too late !

Are spring bulbs intimidating ?

Cet article en français.

Louise

The very first spring flowering : a snowdrop
bulb. It appears at the end of March or start
of April,  depending on how winter went.
This plant doesn't multiply in my garden
making it especially precious.

Isn't establishing a perennial garden continuously in bloom, from the last snows of spring to the first autumn freeze, one of the gardener's many dreams?

To reach that goal, you automatically have to consider spring bulbs, since they give the earliest flowers of all, plus they are generally quite colorful. However, if you don't think about tulips (most of them blooming in May), we don't often see other spring bulbs species in the garden. 

I always wondered why. Maybe many gardeners who aren't acquainted with these beauties tend to feel intimidated by them. Maybe I'm wrong.

Hélène

On the other hand, maybe it's simply because in fall, this task just doesn't make it to the top of the list considering everything that needs doing in the garden at that time. Maybe the gardener just doesn't feel like gardening anymore especially knowing the hard work's reward will only show 6 months later. It may also feel like a substantial investment - a certain quantity of bulbs is needed to make an impact after all, making for a steep bill when most likely, our gardening money allocation as already been swallowed up.

The Chansonnette Triumph tulip is very tall and keep its huge flower in perfect condition for weeks! Furthermore, it blooms very late (notice how my linden tree as already completely unfurled its leaves). This tulip is part of what I call the "statement plants" here. I positionned the bulbs so a ring would be fashioned around the linden tree.

Louise

Here's a close-up of my crocuses "Ruby Giant"
behind the house. This planting bed is shaded
in summer by many mature trees, but in April,
those trees are still leafless. The crocuses can
enjoy every beam of sunshine all for themelves.

For my own, I can speak of my reticences to plant bulbs, due to my frame of mind at the time. 

I discovered these plants when we bought our first house. The first spring there, nice, long leaves sporting a crisp, refreshing shade of green appeared against the concrete foundation of the house. Followed a cloud of beautiful, vivid yellow crocus flowers: a vision of heaven for my color-starved eyes. Of course, at that time, I was ignorant of their name, let alone the fact that they were bulbs! I couldn't even guess how important these plants were for the spring garden. That was my first obstacle: my own ignorance.

The color palette of spring bulbs can satisfy many tastes since it can encompass vivid and bright colors as well as the most delicate pastels. Here, soft pink Glory-Of-The-Snow (Chionodoxa) grow through a carpet of various ground covers.

One day I came back with a gardening magazine which I bought because of the cover picture, a perfect mound of mixed yellow and purple crocuses.

It was still not enough to compel me to purchase new plant varieties. I wouldn't have dreamed of multiplying the bulbs I already had, scared that I could just kill them between my inexpert hands. Furthermore, how was I supposed to figure out where they were planted, after they had flowered, faded and were nowhere to be seen anymore? Second obstacle: those devilish plants disappear once their foliage browns and dry up.

Once we bought our second house, I was saddened to find out there was not a single crocus in that garden. What a blow! I found my yard seriously laking something. I jumped right back in the books, reading anything and everything that talked about the subject, dreaming about those once-upon-a-time early splashes of spring color amidst the brown vegetation of the beds. During that first winter in our new house, I had subscribed for a perennial plants catalog. Without asking for it, I received their fall edition that presented an impressive amount of bulbs.

This confronted me to yet another obstacle: planting bulbs in fall seemed like an impossible task. How was I supposed to place bulbs in the ground of my already filled-to-the-brim-with-vegetation beds?

Yet, that vivid dream of a colorful spring beconed and with a trowel in my trembling hand, the first bulb was planted, regardless of the fears that assailed me: fear that bulbs and neighboring plants would imped on each other, fear of the chosen location, fear of how many bulbs I could squeeze in a single hole, fear of my inexpertise regarding the dept of the hole, the distance between each bulb, etc. But as each little bag of bulbs emptied itself, the task was becoming easier and easier, my hands were trembling less, my fears were muted.

In Hélène's garden, a ring of daffodils around a tree brings color and gaity. Many varieties multiply by themselves, like these Original Poet's, an heirloom variety.

The following spring, my gardening beds were filled with colorful flowers, way before anything else greened. Here's some tips and tricks I find important that I discovered throughout the years I catered for spring bulbs:

 -When the cat's away, the mice will play. In other words, spring bulbs are plants that benefit tremendously from the vast emptiness that occur in nature during springtime, but this emptiness only lasts a short while. In that season of renewal, everything takes some time to awake and flourish. The spring bulbs, on the contrary, are quick little fellows that grow up, set flower and recharge very rapidly while they have the sunshine, rain and space all for themselves. They even benefit from the undivided attention of pollinators. Then, they disappear, generally before other plants overshadow them and steal their sun and rain. The rest of the year, these bulbs that charm us so much in spring are forgotten, back in dormance.

The more the varieties of bulbs are early, the more the plants are small and close to the ground since they don't have time to grow a lot and accumulate energy before their active life cycle is over. As gardeners, we can benefit from this musical chairs game in nature by placing those early bulbs right where they will be replaced by other plants later on.

 

This is the beginning of April.
Here, I planted my crocuses 
in color patches in a bed near
the sidewalk. They're so early
that they flower before the
grass has even had the time
to turn green !

Same place, mid-May.The 
crocus flowers are gone. We can
see their slender leaves lying
down horizontally. In blue, we
see muscaris. They have a
marvelous perfume. We can
also spot the wide leaf of a
late variety of tulip that will
bloom only in June. In the
background, narcissus are blooming
and when they are done, they'll be
replaced by alliums in July.

- To maximize flowerings in a restrained environment, we can plant different bulbs in the same hole. The idea is to regroup species that have different height and even better, different growing time frames, like shown in the 2 pictures above. For example, crocuses bloom at the end of March - beginning of April. On the other end narcissus flower at the end of April - beginning of May, for most of them. Round this group up with late-blooming tulips that come around the end of May - beginning of June and you have a solid block of ongoing flowers right there. Examples of such tulips that would work here are Darwin tulips and parrot tulips. If you're searching for low-growing, late-blooming, muscaris are good, flowering at the end of May - beginning of June.

- It's easier to install bulbs while creating a new garden bed.  You just need to plant that bed in fall instead of spring. It's better to plant the bulbs at the same time as the neighboring plants since nothing is in our way to dig each plant's hole.

Delicate, sky blue Pushkinias, pushing through
a mat of lesser periwinkle (Vinca Minor). 

- Spring bulbs can only be disturbed while in their dormancy state. Meaning when their leaves have brown and are dead. So if you have to lift bulbs of the ground, wait for them to flower, then wait for their leaves to turn brown naturally. Those green leaves after the blooming are recharging the bulb with energy for next year's blooming; if you cut them short (in order to moving the bulb or for the esthetism of the thing), you are jeopardizing the plant's capability for future blossoms. If you forethought the placement of your bulbs according to the placement of your other plants, these other plants may be able to grow over your bulbs while these are fading, hiding the bulbs' unsightly browning leaves with their new green leaves. 

- Perennials that grow slowly and form a neatly delimited mound are ideal partners for bulbs, since they leave a space around them that's easy to dig for the placement of the bulbs without fear of hacking of vital root systems. Furthermore, if their leaves wait until the end of spring to unfurl, they will hide the unsightly yellowing leaves of the bulbs. For instance, hostas make excellent neighbours to bulbs.

- Those bulbs that multiply year after year make poor neighbours to annuals. An annual, by definition, needs to be pulled out and planted back each season. It's easy this way to damage surrounding bulbs that we frankly don't see, either with a shovel or excessive disturbance of the soil, operations that are unavoidable in order to plant annuals. Thus, it's better to restrain from placing these two kinds of plants close together.

Pink and purple yacinth flowers with early, soft yellow tulips at Hélène's. Yacinth is one of those more perfumed flowers. One or two branches are enough to perfume an entire room.

Botanical tulips "Tulipa Tarda" multiply
abondantly in my garden. I bought only 10 bulbs
15 years ago, just enough for one clump.
Now, I have 6 or 8 clumps that conhtinue to 
expand year after year. The only thing I had to do
was to sow the seeds that formed inside the dried
seed capsules that followed after the pollinated
flowers faded.

- To prevent work and cost, it's better to choose bulbs that will multiply. I love the perfume of yacinth flowers and the beauty of parrot tulips, but I never buy any because here, they don't multiply; in fact, they dwindle rapidly to nothing. Yacinths are the worst for me, because even at the wee second year, their flowering is disappointing. It depends where you are of course: at Hélène's, the yacinths multiply. 

As for the summer bulbs like dahlias and gladiolus, they can't survive the winter here. Those will need to be lifted up from the ground, stored and planted back the following spring, a task that can become tedious year after year, but one that could make more sense in an annual garden bed.

Left, 2012. Right, 2013. A visual on multiplication.

On the other hand, there is a multitude of bulbs available that keep multiplying year after year, giving more and more flowers out of bigger and bigger mounds. At my house, crocuses, Scillas, Glories of the Snow and muscaris multiply this way. Daffodils will multiply slowly as well (however, I've noticed them to make a lot of tiny bulbs that take some years before flowering). Garden tulips, from the latin name Tulipa Gesneriana, and who's origin is obscure, have hybrids of all color and form, but most of these hybrids will only produce leaves from their second year onward. Botanical tulips, meaning all tulips except garden tulips, are named thus because - unlike garden tulips - can be retraced to their wild ancestors. They multiply readily if they're happy enough where planted. Here, it's the case of Tulipas Greigii, for example. I also have many mounds of Tulipa Tarda, since I let the plants produce seeds that I take when they're very dry and plant elsewhere. Darwin's tulips come back year after year with such reliability that some catalogues sell them as "perrenials".

It's unfortunate for the hybrids of garden tulips that dwindle even on the second year and onward.

A tiny tulip that was supposed to be blue (I was sold the wrong bulbs) is still a fabulous little specimen: it's earlier than any other in my current possession, a single bulb can produce many flowers and they flower at the same time as this purple Glory of the snow that's growing next to it.

In Louise's garden, botanical tulips "Tulipa Bakeri" growing through that big mound of creeping phlox.

Hélène:

These big pompoms stand 3 feet from the ground on a spindly stalk bring a whimsical touch to the June garden. After a long blooming, these stalks become wondrous magic wands for kids to play with!

Being knowledgeable enough with spring bulbs, I tried my luck with summer bulbs, like decorative onions. Even thought two of them have been eaten by rabbits, the rest made an amazing display. They looked like giant bubbles floating above my garden! Furthermore, these alliums come in many forms, colors and height.

And now, with all these informations and possibilities, will you jump in the adventure of bulbs too?

From a bed of Wormwood (Artemisia Schmidtiana 'Silver Mound'), strawberry and bronze bugle (Ajuga Reptans), grow Alliums. Even the giant hosta is dwarfed by the height of the alliums!