Pink Slipped and I Don’t Care
Ever notice how there are weeks where your life becomes clearer (and conversely muddier). Sometimes, in the world of a writer, the words flow effortlessly, the thoughts are clear and life is sweet. And sometimes, it’s like pulling words from toffee. Each word comes away grudgingly and sticky sweet. You love each of the words but there’s only so many you can digest.
This morning is like that. It’s a pregnant morning. Full of sweet promise and a dream. And of a measure of uncertainty. I’m just not sure where the words are going to come from but I know they’re coming.
The important thing about this morning is that for the first time in 12 years, I’m not writing my gardening column. It seems to be a victim of the recession and the paper has confirmed that unless something changes in the next few weeks, I’ll disappear from the pages. I’ve written all remaining columns and they’re on the spike waiting to be published.
After the first bit of a shock after getting the pink-slip letter, and realizing that this small chunk of money was disappearing, I began to smile a lot. You see, I’ve been churning out 1000 word columns for over 12 years. Every week, every season, every topic you can think of and every which way but loose. I start my week by writing the column, it gets the writerly juices pumped up and the rest of the week flows from there. But I no longer have to do this. I can write what I damn well please. Or not.
At a deeper level, the column was one of the last remnants of my farm life. That life ended a few years ago in divorce and the column was one of the few things that continued on from that period. So while I miss the morning exercise, and the monthly cheque, I’m not missing that last link in the chain to that time. I no longer have to be the guy in the column, I can be pretty much whoever I want to be.
Ah! Responsibility. Even now, I’m starting my week off by writing something in the spirit of the column. I’d get to the office (coffee in hand) and see what popped up about gardening. See what was important in the gardening world, or what was blooming in my garden-life and then launch the week on that topic. So here I am, saying goodbye to that life. Goodbye to that period in my life. There are bittersweet memories in those goodbyes but I can honestly say that I’m more looking forward to the future than I am to the past.
You see, in my life every time something has happened that could be considered a negative, something else came along that was a great replacement. Often better (or different enough to seem better). My grandmother once said, “Doug could fall down a outhouse and come out smelling like a rose.” So I’m not sure where the rose is in this pink-slip but I know it’s coming my way as I write.
In some ways it’s like looking at a blank sheet of paper, an empty garden, an untouched block of sculpture wood and not having a friggin’ clue what’s going to emerge. And being able to laugh at that uncertainty because you just gotta know something good is around the corner. This morning is the uncertainty; the freedom to choose, the terror of choosing, the delight in the lack of boundaries and the wonder in trying to understand how it’s all going to turn out.
So what’s that got to do with you? My reader. Darned if I know. But this is a blog - I get to write what I want. 
And this was my declaration of column emancipation; who knows what that’s going to mean to the way I write, the things I see on Monday mornings or if it changes at all.
But I’m feeling pretty good about it so I thought I’d share it.
Relax for Crying Out Loud
So here’s the thing; this is one of those psychological columns I never write. But I should - at least once or twice every year. I want to tell you that it’s OK, it’s just fine to make a mess of your gardening. I can’t tell you how many gardeners I meet, otherwise fine upstanding, seemingly-rational individuals who get bent out of shape around their gardening. And I’m here to tell you to relax.
There seems to be some kind of mass hysteria creeping across the land that the common dandelion, that small herb that was imported into the country as an edible plant, is a wrong plant in a wrong time. That somehow it’s not only possible but desirable to have a life without this plant. So quick quiz time. What’s more important, having dandelions on your lawn or having a job? Having dandelions on your lawn or seeing millions of children displaced by war and famine? Right. So where do you put your energy and your money? I’m here to tell you that it’s fine to not worry about dandelions, that the end of the world will not come because there are dandelions on your lawn. You can eliminate them if you want to by using organic methods but frankly, it’s not worth losing much sleep over this small plant. If you are, let me suggest you get a life.
A corollary to that is that weeds exist in my garden and if you’re looking for a perfectly clean garden, you won’t find it anywhere close to me. I keep the garden clean enough to be healthy and messy enough to be human. Anything more would involve compulsive behaviour I’m not prepared to accept in my life. I’d suggest you relax about the odd weed here and there.
Snakes exist. They too are good guys in the garden, eating all manner of slugs and other insects that do indeed chow down on your garden. But given a choice, many homeowners will gladly whack a snake over any number of slugs or other insect pests. I don’t want them in my house but I’m quite pleased that these creatures live in my garden to help me with insects. Speaking of insects, they too have a place in the garden. The vast majority of them are benign creatures with a specific spot in the web of life. I’m still amazed at the response of gardeners who believe that all insects are bad insects, that killing anything that flies, crawls or slithers is a mandatory part of gardening. Relax, give yourself permission to let the rest of the natural world exist and create a balance in your garden.
When you do this, you might indeed lose a plant or two to insects. It’s a price we pay to invade a natural setting. A price we pay to force Mother Nature to our will rather than bending to hers. Because gardening is an artificial construct, something that is totally unnatural in the scheme of things and a whole lot of relaxing is in order when you have to go head-to-head with old Ma Nature. Give yourself permission to lose some plants in your garden to insects and disease. Again, ask yourself what’s important in the scheme of things.
Not all plants live. And not all plants that are perennial live forever. There is indeed a time and place for all plants and even those plants advertised as perennials do not necessarily live more than a few years. A dirty secret we in the nursery trade don’t like to talk about is that all plants have a lifespan. You accept that annuals die after one season; it is equally important to understand that some perennial plants die after two or three or some trees don’t even pass twenty years willingly. You’re going to lose plants in the garden and the sooner you simply accept those losses and try to figure out why (fixing the conditions whenever possible naturally) the sooner you’ll be a real gardener and not simply a decorator.
I’m pleased to say that I’ve started and grown millions of plants in my gardening career and I’m almost equally pleased to tell you that the more you kill, the easier it becomes. That first plant is a hard one to lose. The millionth doesn’t even get a yawn. The advantage the pros have is that we know we can’t grow them all. We know we’re going to lose plants and the more we try to push the season, the growing zone or range of exotica, the more we know we’re going to lose. It’s a fact of life and we give ourselves permission to kill as many plants as we need to in order to have a great garden. Losing a plant isn’t the end of the world although when it’s an expensive one, it may be the end of that year’s experiment. By understanding that plants die, I give myself permission to blame the plant and not myself. And assuming that’s true, that I’ve given the plant the conditions it wants and needs, then I move on with my life continuing to try to grow all manner of interesting plants.
This little rant comes from somewhere within me that shares your thought that we should have great looking gardens, weed-free lawns and perfectly-manicured lives. My life is a messy ongoing creative effort, my gardens simply reflect that and for the most part, I’m good with it. I’m publicly giving myself permission to have a messy garden, a chaotic nature-filled life outside my doors and one that doesn’t involve perfection. My garden will speak to me and I’ll enjoy it wholeheartedly because in my eyes it will be as good as it gets this year. I’m not your basic perfect human and neither is my garden the epitome of perfection. If you’re perfect, then have a perfect garden as well, otherwise, take a deep breath and relax.
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on a Sunday night. The Princess tells me we have a bumper seed germination of Lemon Cilantro. This is very good news except I don’t like cilantro. I may have to learn.
Installed a high-pressure sodium grow light in basement. 150 watts and it burns your eyes if you look directly at it. I have it shielded by aluminum foil so the light doesn’t hit you when you walk toward the bench - but it does shine directly down on the plants. Hope it’s enough to grow our seedlings but at the rate the Princess is laying in the seeds I hae me doots. We only have one shelf under the light at this time (an old door) so we can grow a few pots but not as many as Mayo wants. Ah well.
Been digging and dividing like mad - a half dozen plants at lunch every day. Trying to clean out the main bed so I can add some peat and top soil to raise it up a few inches. Given I don’t have any real soil there, anything is an improvement. I do think I transplanted a volunteer raspberry instead of the nearby shrub rose. Ah well, if true, it won’t be the first mistake I’ll make this gardening season. (although I have to say this is a particularly dumb one). The problem is that rabbits ate the canes to the ground and I’m guessing where it was and making decisions based on small twigs sticking up.
I told the Princess we could plant some of her old-fashioned plants between the developing perennials in the holding bed so we could grow them out for seed collecting. I’m a hero for sharing my perennial space but I figure it will make the garden area look like a cottage garden - I’ll take some pics.
Have sown 2-300 daylily seed in this bed so we’ll see how many germinate.
Planted the 2010 AARS Rose winner on the weekend but I can’t tell you about it yet (we’ve been asked to hold the pics etc until June) But my goodness it sounds sweet and I can hardly wait to see it in its full bloom. Rose wasn’t happy to come to this cold weather but it’s hanging in (or at least it’s not dying yet)
Local Home Depot had a sale on Cedars on the weekend - picked up twenty 4-5 foot tall cedar trees to start laying in the visual barrier between the road and the house. Walked the property and identified all the site lines I had to block, got enough cedar to do them all. Going to call Nole with the backhoe tomorrow and see if i can get him to dig those holes and the other 20 holes I’m going to need for the laneway and some other trees. Hint, in landscaping always do the trees, hardscape, and big stuff first before flowers. They take the money to be sure but they also take the time to grow.
Had I paid attention to this, I wouldn’t be digging up the perennials now to lay in the raised beds. I should have made the raised beds first and then done the planting but who listens to his own advice. Chalk this one up to last year’s mistake and rush to get plants in the ground - fixing your own mistakes is so damn discouraging when you know better.
Speaking of Home Depot. I was glad to see only organic controls on the pest-control shelves. If they would only have stuck with Tony instead of Joey, it would be a good company. (Nascar alert)
And still speaking of Home Depot, turns out I’m doing a talk at the HD in Little Italy in Toronto (don’t ask me the address, the p.r. folks are driving) and I think it’s planned for 1pm on May 3. More later when I get an address.
Taught Mayo how to make a pea-fence the old-fashioned way (you grow your garden peas on it) using nothing but old twigs and branches from old Christmas trees. How come hers looks way better than mine ever did? Essentially, you lay down a bunch of branches over top of your sown peas and the peas grow up through them - makes it easy to harvest the peas. To clean up, you just pull up the branches and twigs.
It looks like the variegated ginger made it through the winter again. That’s “great” but it hasn’t flowered in about 5 years and it’s coming to the end of it’s welcome here. This could be the year it gets to try and see if it can overwinter outside (not likely but calling it an experiment saves having to actually toss them out)
Haven’t seen our deer herd this spring yet but with 20 nursery-fresh cedar sitting beside the tulip bed, I figure that’s candy waiting to be unwrapped. Just sprayed Liquid Fence on them all. Good grief that stuff stinks - it smells like something dead this way comes (which considering its purpose is a good thing I suppose). It worked last winter and the deer didn’t eat the cedars at the house so …. Mind you, I’m about to chainsaw these cedars because they really are ugly and too big for their location.
Big landscaping changes coming now that I got the right trailer hitch ball for my trailer; I can go and get stuff now. If the boy can’t have a truck, he better have a honkin’ big trailer. Neighbor told us we could have a load of manure; gotta go get it but hey - me, the tractor and trailer - can gardening life get any “sweeter”.
Busy week ahead - lots of writing projects to get going. Was asked to write something for a getting ready for wearing a bikini website (seriously!) I’m not wearing one (not even an advanced speedo) but the editors think there’s weight training possibilities in gardening (and there are) I’ll tell you about it after I write it. Readers who make snide comments about gardening and bikinis will earn negative brownie points. 
Sunday night - it must be spring because hockey is still on the tube. The light is still good at 7pm and I’m going to take a walk to smell the clean lake air rolling over my lovely Amherst Island. Can life get any better?
Gardening Together
Some of you know that my partner is Mayo Underwood, an heirloom seed expert and founder of Underwood Gardens seed company. She sold the company a few years ago, got involved both with me and with some other writing on men’s skin care
We live and garden together and had to have some of “those” conversations before we started down this path. You know what I mean by “those” types of conversations - they’re the ones that all couples have from time to time to work out the important ground rules - fraught with danger for all concerned. These are the kinds of conversations that guys have been trained to avoid from the time we discover the other species living on this planet. (And before you ask - yes indeed the official Guy-Manual 34th edition does say that women are a different species than men - we’re not sure what species they are so they get their own)
So the upshot of our gardening conversation was that it was decided that because I was still involved in gardening, had more experience in a wider range of gardening, etc. I would be Head Gardener (note caps in title). All design decisions and plant decisions were ultimately to be mine. But as the first gardener, my Princess would be in charge of vegetables. And more particularly - she’d be in charge of seeds for the vegetable garden.
When we moved, she brought some 600 varieties of seeds with her. Yes, that’s not a typo - that’s 600 varieties, give or take a hundred or two. Mayo packed the veggies separate from the flowers and somehow “lost” the veggies. They’re here - she just wasn’t sure in our unpacking where they were.
To make a long story very short, I went looking the other night and found them. I’m a hero - gaining way more partner brownie points than I thought would be possible for a box of seeds. Had I known she’d be this happy, I’d have done it long ago. Had I known the problem I’d create for myself, I’d have hidden the darn box even deeper.
She’s been sitting in the living room for two days now, examining every package and starting seeds with abandon. We’ve got paper towels in baggies filling one windowsill and the second is lining up and we’re not even into the big box yet. We’ve got more started seeds than I have acreage to put them in - even assuming all 8 acres was dug and tilled.
Tonight while digging the garden, (she was watching the Head Gardener work- a reason I suspect may have figured in her decision to appoint me Head Gardener) I suggested we make a garden plan.
Actually plan on what we were going to grow and possibly figure out where we were going to put all of the treasures she was planning on. “Let’s have a “conversation” about this”, says I. (A conversation is one step below a “those” conversation) So we went through the list of “must-grows” - her with an insane giggle and glow and me, with a glower and head-gardener nod or three or hundred. I think it’s probably the latter as I think about it more thoroughly. For example, I do believe we’re now growing 10 varieties of lettuce alone out there this year. Don’t ask me where I’m going to get that kind of space - it’s going to be intensive gardening of a fanatical devotion.
But I’m here to tell you that we’ve taken the ultimate step in gardening coupledom. We’ve combined our seed boxes. Mayo has gone through my perennials and (gasp!) hybrids and put them together with her heirlooms. We’re a couple. Officially. Our flowers, vegetables and herbs have been co-mingled and will be planted side by side in the gardens. I’ve agreed to grow her funky flowers next to my hybrids and all is well in the gardening kingdom (note that’s King-dom not Queen-dom).
It’s one big box of seeds I can tell you but it’s only one box so we’re now officially gardening together.
******
The two boxes on the floor are this year’s seeds in our small garden. (It does not include the peas and beans in this picture) The other boxes are almost full as well and these are now being combined.
Garden Resolutions 2009
Every year it seems I make some kind of resolution about gardening and every summer it seems to go by the wayside. I’m not sure what this says something about my ability to make and keep resolutions, my inner fantasy ambitions about gardening or even some weather and garden gremlins that conspire to keep me resolution success-free for as long as they can. The resolution two years ago that promised to have a serious vegetable garden was one of the biggest failures. That was the year I went away for two weeks and the tomato hornworms started on the tomatoes, did the peppers for an after-taste, the eggplant for dessert and then started all over again on the re-growing tomatoes(which is about the time I came home) In just under 10 days, these guys took care of my major gardening resolution.
Fragrant Plants
I had one that suggested I was going to have nothing but fragrant plants in my garden. Yeah right. Then the nursery with the big honking (non-fragrant) conefowers started knocking on my door, I succumbed, the coneflowers went into the garden, started blooming their fool heads off and bingo, bango another resolution went by the way. I think the corollary to that one was the resolution that said I had all the coneflowers any gardener needed. Yes, you have it - another load of the darn things arrived. What was I supposed to do - disappoint another breeder? So now I have a few more in the garden.
Only Hybrids
Then there was the time I said I wasn’t going to be growing any of my own plants any more. I only wanted brand new hybrids from recognized breeders. That must have been before I saw the prices of the new daylilies I wanted (around 100 bucks each). I have a full envelope of daylily seeds going into the seed beds next year. And seed beds? I wasn’t even supposed to have any of these but somehow I got myself to put a 12 m x 1 m seed bed in. After all, I had several dozen young lily plants and where was I going to put them. A monster seed bed would take care of all 30 plants for sure. So the envelope of daylily seeds should fill up another 3m of the bed and who knows what’s going to go there as well. And yes, I did lay the rails down for a second trial bed. After all, if I’m going to have one, I might as well have two because the Princess is sure to want a few rows for her new found gems.
Small Gardens
What about the notion of a small garden. Right. I left a 2-acre property for an 8-acre one. Does that sound smaller to you? I went from a 16-hp serious lawn tractor/mower to a 23-hp 4-wheel drive (hydraulics and bucket loader) small farm utility tractor. Does that sound like restraint and doing things in a small way? I had half the front lawn gone on the old property, I have had plans drawn up for the entire back and front lawn on the new one. I’m not sure which is worse but I confess that one of this year’s potential garden resolutions is to ignore the entire garden plan, simply mow it and not garden there at all. Except that this is where we have some soil deeper than 2-inches. I’ll have to get back to you.
Resolution Weakness
What is entirely clear is that my resolution making ability is woefully weak. To heck with it, in truth it’s totally lacking in any way of completion. I simply can’t seem to make a garden resolution that has any reasonable sense of being accomplished. This isn’t the case in the rest of my life - I resolved to lose some weight and I’m half way to university playing weight and should hit that by early summer. I resolved to do a bunch of other things and they’re either done or getting done. It’s not the resolution-doing that seems to be the problem; it’s the darned garden resolution-making that’s all messed up.
This Year I Promise
So. Here are my garden resolutions for this year. I promise faithfully to accomplish each and every one of them in this new awareness of past problems.
The first is that I am going to accept every new plant that wants to come and live in my garden. There are no restraints being placed on who and what and when. I will continue to determine the where these plants will live but generally speaking, if nurseries can get to my island, it can have a place in my garden.
I am not going to build more gardens than I can manage. This is because I’m only going to finish the trial bed I started last fall, edge the rest of the bunkhouse garden and call it a summer. I’m not going to fight with the shallow soil but every plant that comes will go directly into the trial beds. Live there or not. Oh yeah, I have to clean up the gardens around the house where the contractors aren’t going to be working. Out with all those garden thugs! That’s a summer-long project by itself. So that’s it. No backyard garden project, no big front yard project - I’ll leave those for another year - or not.
The garden is going to be manageable without a lot of work. If a plant is too much work, it will get yanked out on the spot. This one I’m sure I can do as I’ve done it before. No sense having plants that don’t perform for you. I don’t care if it’s a rose, a perennial or annual, it either performs or it’s gone.
These I so resolve.
Garden Television
There’s a discussion winding down at Garden Rant about television programming at HGTV and like a lot of things, I’m curious about how folks see gardening television. I’ve done several kinds of garden tv (guest shots, studio work, my own cable show ) and that medium is an interesting one. But I confess that I’m sometimes a little confused by how gardeners see shows about gardening.
So when I’m curious - I usually ask my readers. I’m going to do this exercise here on my blog and in my newsletter because I really want to know what makes good gardening television for you folks.
Design The Perfect Gardening Television Programme
I know that there isn’t likely going to be one format that works for everyone. That different gardeners will have different needs - but I suspect there are some common core elements to great gardening television.
So what are they?
Here’s how to do it
First - feel free to use the comments or use the contact me form so your answer will go directly to my inbox and will be tagged as a television project answer. I don’t want to lose these thoughts. And if you send it via the contact sheet, nobody but me is going to see it.
Second - the question or challenge is to tell me what would be the core elements, what kinds of things do you want to see on a gardening television show?
What kinds of things do you hate to see?
Give me the good, the bad and the downright plain ugly.
What would make a perfect garden tv show?
Where’s this going?
Darned if I really know. But like a lot of things, I tend to gather information and then let that information brew for a bit - then launch projects that meet the needs my readers have identified as important. From articles to blogs to newsletters to forums to seminars - that’s how this entire gardening project has developed. One reader input at a time.
So if I get some good ideas - you can assume I’ll be working behind the scenes to do something with them.
Christmas Tree Legends
December 21, 2007 by Doug
Filed under Miscellaneous
By now, many of you will have put up your Christmas tree, decorated it and stuffed presents under its skirts to tantalize and tease all in the household.
As most of you know, there is a long tradition of using evergreens in winter celebrations. Dr. C. Hole in the book, Protective Symbols in the Home, wrote that, “Long before the Christian era began, evergreens which flourish when everything else in nature is withered and dead, were regarded as symbols of undying life, and used in magical rites to ensure the return of vegetation. The sacred buildings of Europe and Western Asia were decked with them for the Winter Solstice rituals.” Most of no longer celebrate those Winter Solstice rituals, nor I suspect do we regard our trees as anything more than hangers to hold those decorations for Christmas morning.
Bringing Greenery Indoors
While our society is guilty of succumbing to advertising jingles and pressures, putting up Christmas trees just after Halloween in some cases, the traditions are much more restrictive than that. Christmas greenery was not to be brought into the house until Christmas Eve in most traditions – although this was probably more respected in theory than in operating fact. It was however to be removed from the house before Twelfth Night or January 6. The trees were not burned and certainly the holly and ivy used in decorating the house was never burned in the fireplace. In some parts of Ireland, the holly was kept and burnt under the pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.
Martin Luther
Legend has it that Martin Luther gave us our first decorated Christmas tree. The story goes that he wandered outside one bright, star-lit Christmas eve and was awed by the millions of shining stars. To celebrate this heavenly sight, he set up a tree for his children and covered it with hundreds of lit candles. Whether this was true or not, the first recorded use of a decorated Christmas tree comes from 1605. It was recorded about Stasburg, Germany, “At Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlours of Strasburg and hand thereon rose cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold-foil, sweets, etc.” Using decorated trees remained a continental European tradition for several hundred more years.
Christmas Trees Arrive in England
Christmas trees arrived in England with the court of George III in the 1800’s. The various merchants, soldiers and courtiers who accompanied him from Germany brought these Christmas traditions with them to this new court. However, using decorated trees at Christmas did not catch the public fancy until Queen Victoria and Prince Albert set up a huge tree at Windsor Castle. Reported in the press, complete with illustrations, the Christmas tree craze was born and we’ve not been the same since. I do note that there was a report in 1912 that Christmas trees were still only for the well-to-do. The landowners or merchants would set up a tree and all the children would be invited in to look at the lit candles and decorations. The poor could not afford such luxury. And such luxury it is. A friend of ours decorates his tree with candles and one of our Christmas outings is to visit and sit around a candle-lit tree sipping our mulled cider and hot chocolate. They are beautiful but one has to be very, very careful with lit candles next to a resinous evergreen.
First Electric Lightbulbs
After the introduction of electricity, light bulbs replaced candles and trees began to be erected in public place for all to enjoy. The first of the electric-lit public trees that is well recorded took place in Pasadena, California in 1909. Now, the use of Christmas trees is everywhere and I suspect the original meanings have been lost in that ubiquity. Just part of the landscape so to speak.
Practical note
As a note of practicality in this historical lesson, do keep your tree well watered this season. Not that it will live afterwards but if you keep it watered in its stand, the needles will stay green longer and not dry out. Dry needles are serious fire hazards and can be lit off by the heat of a nearby electric light bulb. Once ignited, it only takes three seconds for the tree to be totally consumed by flames and almost impossible to extinguish with household fire systems. A few gallons of water and a few minutes every day or two can easily prevent a Christmas tragedy.
Let me take this moment to wish all of you a very happy Christmas season. However you see or celebrate this holiday season, I hope you can find it in your hearts to bring some love into this world. Love, in life or gardening, is really the most important thing we share and my Christmas wish for you would be that you are able to find and share some love with those around you.
Merry Christmas.
Winter Gardening
Winter seems to have arrived with a bit of a bang this past week. The lawn chairs are covered in snow and if that’s not a sign I’m not supposed to be sitting out there, I’m not sure what is. You have to love it though; the clean white snow covering everything is a clear signal that I should get on with next year’s gardening. Or at least make sure that whatever I’ve left undone in the house is well and truly taken care of. And here’s where my cold basement comes into play. I am watering every plant I brought indoors even though the mice seemed to have taken a bit of a shine to the geraniums when I put them down in the old cold cellar. The upshot of this is that the geraniums are a bit smaller now and the mice are gone, courtesy of a few traps, peanut butter and bait. I have high hopes that the plants will overwinter in the old way by being frost free but damp and without light. I know if I let them stay down there without water or in a heated basement, they’ll be dead come spring but the old cold cellar “should” work according to garden lore. I’ll get back to you though.
Houseplants
I’m also trying to decide what to do with the ginger. Last year, I let it almost freeze (or it did freeze a bit) and it was decidedly unhappy with me. This is the variegated ginger that has never flowered so perhaps it too is sending a message. Having tried bright light all winter, dormancy with little water and last year almost-freezing, I’m thinking that my season simply isn’t long enough for this plant. I suspect that grow-lights are the answer but I’m not committed enough to the plant to set up a growing system for one plant. I think it will get a cold room treatment this year and I’ll combine that with an early spring in the seed starter area and in-ground growing. And if that doesn’t bring it into bloom next summer, I’ll have one more plant for the compost pile. The only thing that will get it dug up next fall will be having produced blooms. There’s only so much room I want to give plants that don’t perform.
Rule of Watering Houseplants
The other plants are doing well although the basil I brought indoors has been dropping leaves a bit. I think I have to step up the watering there a bit. Remember the rule of watering indoor plants? I have to remind myself of it regularly. Touch the potted soil with your finger. If the soil is slightly damp, do not water. If your finger comes away bone dry, soak the pot. In this way, you’ll avoid over or underwatering and your plants will love you for the even supply of moisture. There’s no rule that says “water every third day” that makes sense to me because every house is different. And zones within houses are different; plants over heating vents require more water than plants stuck in cold, dark corners. Touch the soil with your finger for best results. And no, one of those fancy watering gauges is no substitute for your finger. I’ve heard more folks kill plants with those things because the readings are off. Your finger never needs batteries, never hides in a drawer somewhere you can’t find it, is readily accessible 24 hours of the day whenever you think of watering and doesn’t make mistakes. Why use a gizmo when you have a finger?
Garden Catalogs
The first catalog also arrived in the mail this past week. Yes! I’m now ready to start planning for next year. Mind you, I also have somewhere around 300 varieties of seed already in the basement hidden from the mice in mouse-proof containers. So my spring project is not likely to be choosing seed, but rather building a seed starting rack in the basement. Seems there’s a lot of things going on in the basement this spring. I suspect we’ll have enough lights down there to qualify as a grow-op by the time real spring rolls around. But it is still fun to look through the catalogs and find the treasures, the plants you really want to start yourself because you know they won’t be available in garden centres. That’s the advantage of having your own little growing area in the basement; you get to pick what to grow.
Overwintering Shrub Cuttings
The other plants that got to visit the basement this past week were the shrub cuttings I had taken last summer. I had great intentions of potting them up and overwintering them outdoors but it was a case of too little, too late on those. So the cuttings dropped all their leaves with frosts and reduced light levels, have been well and truly frozen outdoors, and are now downstairs in the cold cellar along with the geraniums. They should be fine down there; staying dormant until next spring. I will plant them in the ground next year in a small temporary nursery area so they’ll grow up into nice shrubs in a year or three. I need a ton of these plants for the landscaping I want to do so I suspect I’ll wind up taking even more cuttings next year. Watch out for your shrubs if I come to visit your garden!
Mind you, that won’t take place until next spring and for now, I have enough projects to keep me busy dreaming of next year. I’ll dream right on through this snow. And what projects are you dreaming of for next year?
