Gardening in a time of plague, Chapt. 2

Basically the Phactors are keeping a low profile and limiting our out of the garden excursions to the necessities.  It has been a very cool spring following a mild winter.  But we have had two frosts and some plants have been frosted twice like our poor Magnolia seiboldii. Lots of trees and shrubs had expanding leaves that were easily frozen.  TPP thinks most will recover unless they were in poor shape anyways, like our dwarf Metasequoia. Tough stuff like lettuce and broccoli are doing well enough.  But people who planted the tropical garden plants: tomato, pepper, eggplant may now be regretting being anxious.  Such plants will not grow with nighttime temps below 50 F.  The coolish spring has the happy result of keeping flowering shrubs in handsome shape for a considerable period of time. Our gardens do look good especially the redbuds and dogwoods.  Had to make a trip to the local garden shoppe to buy plants for later planting, and for some reason their supply is low, and it isn't from additional sales.  In times of plague and home confinement you would expect more interest in gardening wouldn't you?  We have been participating in some zoom TGIF sessions just to enjoy seeing our friends and chatting.  A few brave souls have brought drinks and had a garden walk around at decent social distances. With neither a vaccine nor an effective means of treatment, emerging seems like a choice between evils. And a President even more desperate to get the economy going, and yet showing no interest in our increaed risk of death does not promote any confidence.  

Gardening in a time of plague

TPP considers himself essential to his garden especially now during the spring cleanup season.  So many leaves that it makes you wonder if any got cleaned up last fall. The dead aerial shoots of herbaceous perennials acted rather like a snow fence and gathered the leaves quite handily but now both the dead shoots and the leaves they captured must be removed to free up the perennial portions to grow. The trick is to figure out how much some plants died back.  Some don't die back at all, Some lose a branch here or there.  And it was a mild winter, so die back may be limited, or even puzzling like our Korean azaleas that were well budded but only a few flowers survived to open this past week.  What killed all the rest?  No idea.  The plants are OK and leafing out normally, must have been the late fall that did not allow buds to form as usual.  But all of our other hardy azaleas seem to be just fine.  For the most part self-quarantined gardening is keeping us safe from contact with infected people, and TPP just heard that in Illinois garden centers are considered essential during May, and of course they are.  Some may ask, "who was that masked man?".  And what kind of tomatoes did he decide to plant?  BYW here in the upper Midwest the weather is still too unsettled and cold for tropical garden plants.  Rule: are the nighttime temperatures above 50 F?  If not hold off on those tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, and squash.  Go ahead and plant some peas and carrots, they will do fine in the cooler weather.  Now how are the garden shops going to handle the social distancing that still remains necessary?  No virus with those tomato plants, please.  It is clear here in Lincolnland that life is not and cannot return to normal yet, or anytime in the near future.  Now who delivers tequila?  TPP has gardening to do and must have the essentials.

Eostre on April 1st.

Eostre is an ancient goddess of spring, and because of some weird dating mechanism based on a lunar calendar, this year the religious holiday superimposed upon this honorable pagan celebration occurs on April 1st, which is often called April Fools Day, a widely disliked display of foolishness.  The religious holiday has no significance for this writer, and it wasn't something that was part of mix of messages, and it was more like Mother Nature was playing an April 1st joke on all of us.  TPP always looks forward to spring, and usually by this time 30 to 40 plants in our gardens have commenced blooming (or even come and gone).  This year, 2018, only 17 plants have started flowering, and three of these events were recorded yesterday on 31 March.  And today will be a sort of joke about spring because it is cold and tonight the temperature may be cold enough to be damaging  to even quite hardy plants.  This morning in the local newspaper an article about houseplants quoted a  horticulturalist as saying "the mental health benefits of plants are obvious."  TPP would concur, growing plants is highly therapeutic, and TPP can think of no person he deeply dislikes who also grows plants, and some of the worst would have to be coached "green side up" if they were laying sod.  So today's weather, and its impact on TPP's plants is rather depressing.  So come on Eostre, some fancy bourbon has been sacrificed (spilt) in your honor, and yet we get more cold, and even snow is possible.  OK TPP admits that the upper Midwest's weather may be beyond the abilities of an ancient goddess (but it was well-aged bourbon).  At any rate let's get this last gasp of winter over with.   TPP will attempt to cheer himself and others around him by cooking something semitropical and warming.  Maybe even indulging in a rum-based cocktail.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Crested Iris

One of the ways to get lots of plants in your yard is to find little places to stick in little plants.  This particular one has been difficult because it is so small, and the thin, wiry rhizomes are so shallow growing that the tree rats keep digging it up, except when growing in a rock garden situation.  This is Iris cristata, the crested iris, because it has crests on the outer tepals.  It's usually has a blue perianth; this is a white variant. Our wild-type blue one keeps getting dug by the above mentioned rats, and it has more striking markings and generally is prettier.  This plant stands about 3-4 inches tall at this stage, and it won't get markedly larger.  It's really a cute little thing, and if undisturbed it can spread into a decent sized mat.  It is easily overrun by weeds, and easily over buried with leaves, and easily over looked.  So it needs your help. This is a native of Eastern North America in somewhat open woodlands. 

TGIF - 4 March

It's a wonderful day for early March. Winter is sputtering out and the spring awakening has begun.  So today is the official start of the garden margarita season.  Make yourself a cocktail, take it outside into your garden, sit in the sun, and then imagine how things are going to look this year. Think about what you will plant to replace the arborvitaes that got smashed like a bug by a huge tulip tree branch that broke during an ice storm.  And feel fortunate that your Sinocalycanthus seeding has not only survived it's 2nd winter, but narrowly escaped the afore-mentioned smashing.  It was a surprisingly busy week, helped two different sets of people prepare for a visit to a tropical field station in Costa Rica.  Worked on fiscal development for the Botanical Society of America. Made a really good hot kumquat-mango salsa for an herb-roasted pork loin for dinner. Got our garden flowering log more or less in working order.  According to the list, there are 88 species of Illinois native plants in our gardens, almost one-third, but not counting ferns or gymnosperms yet. Somehow managed to not record two years of flowering for our many red-buds.  How did that happen?  Probably not enough margaritas. Let's go fix that problem.  

It must be spring - tell tale signs

After a long, cold winter, the human spirit just loves signs of spring, those little tell tales that let you know the season is changing.  Here's a mess of crocus that occupy space around and under some hydrangeas the still need pruning.  These crocus are basically volunteers that have prospered in some borrowed space, and they are so cheerful. They used to be in the lawn, but then that area was converted into  garden (grass to garden good, garden to grass never), and they were not overly disturbed in the process and unbothered by the hydrangeas. It not only looked springy, but this Monday morning had a distinct springy feel to it. But what let TPP know it was spring was the sudden appearance at our house by contractors, who have been starving all winter waiting for the weather to warm. Oh, it's just like the turkey vultures returning to Hinkley, Ohio, but that's not to say all these people who help keep our residence from falling down are vultures, they just appear suddenly.  A painter showed up at 9 am, and she was no sooner getting going than the chimney flashing/caulking contractor shows up to put up their scaffolding. Without even get a swallow of coffee in between, the carpenter who's fixing up the garage and putting in a new door appeared to get some measurements and discuss the job again since it had been quite awhile since we had gone over the details. Us old house owners understand that keeping entropy at bay has a cost and that money keeps contractors alive. In fact they all love our neighborhood!  And it was also cleaning ladies day, but they were on their own in terms to trying to find a space in the drive.  Unlike the starving contractors, our checking account that fattened up over the winter while  hibernating will now start slimming down. So, it must be spring! Of course some garden expenditures may be coming soon too, and if TPP didn't hire these wonderful people, he'd have to do these jobs and not have time to garden. Keep your priorities straight, people!   

Spring!!

Yes, TPP declares spring is officially here in the upper midwest.  No, it's not because of daylight savings time, which for goofy reasons is controversial this year here in Lincolnland. Apparently a one hour change in the lives of today's average citizen is an intolerable adjustment. No flying to the west coast for you guys!  Personally the Phactors like having more daylight later in the day, but then again we're gardeners. No, it's not because the only thing on TV is basketball; spring can't wait until basketball is over. By then it's nearly the 4th of July. Partly it's because it a downright balmy 50 F outside, and in comparison to the quite cold February, this is downright springy weather. It's because the first flowers are blooming!  Yes, a witchhazel wins this years 2st to flower award. Early crocus and snowdrops are not far behind, and the buds of the silver maples are swelling. Our witchhazels are in shady spots, so they are still not ready to flower, but while out on a walk around the hood, some shrubs on the SW corner of a brick wall were in flower. Being a nice guy, TPP stopped by the local garden shoppe and purchased some pansies for some early color. It's always surprising how tough pansies are, and of course, these were forced in a glasshouse, but they are still cheerful. At least 8 fox squirrels are outside busily cleaning up all the birdseed that got buried in the snow, and while well fed, they are looking a bit scruffy, another sign of spring.

Freeze and thaw

The high today was nearly 50 F and it felt like a heat wave. The snow cover melted from most exposed areas revealing an awful lot of lawn and garden work to do. Just picking up the limbs and twigs will take a couple of hours. With daily highs predicted to be above freezing for a week or more, the shift toward spring will being rather suddenly. Better get the cold frame repaired, but finding the right double-walled polycarbonate was not easy. The original material fell apart rather quickly & one explanation was that the polycarbonate for outside use was put in upside down with the UV filter coated side down (it is one-sided). The material used in the cold frame is thinner than what you can find in the big-box home stores, but our nifty local specialty glass place could get TPP an 4 x 8 foot sheet. 
On the other hand, the chest freezer needed some repacking and so TPP found himself delving deep into the freezer. You find some surprises, good ones and bad ones. Today the finds were good including nearly a kilo of Costa Rican coffee beans. Yea!  Tonight's dinner will be an attempt to finally get rid of the last of a large roast ham that had been lurking in the frozen depths for too long. Someplace there are guidelines for how long things can be kept frozen, but generally, if it can't crawl out of the freezer on its own its probably still safe to eat. Also found some nice Spanish chorizo to use with some of afore mentioned ham to make a paella thereby killing two ancient freezer items in one dish!  At times my efficiency boggles the mind. 

Simple pleasures - first lettuce of spring

Anytime the Phactors get garden lettuce prior to May it's considered to be a successful start to the gardening season.  It's hard to argue with garden fresh lettuce (and spring onions).  TPP uses big old black plastic pots or planter boxes and a row cover material.  Bibb and romaine lettuces (which come as plantlets), as well as broccoli, grow very well and have no problem with frosty nights. Last night our spring lettuce salad was one of those simple pleasures of life provided by a garden. The narcissi in the vase were another.

First day of spring - hardly!

The calendar is telling us today is the first day of spring; the weather is not.  It was blustery and in the low 20s (-6 C) this morning, and the walk to the coffee shop and then to campus just about froze my arse off.  Such is the particular magic of wind chill.  Walking into a warm and moist coffee shop on such a day and your glasses totally fog, so happy spring to all the unidentified regular patrons who greeted TPP this morning. Tonight the low temperature is supposed to be 13 F (-10.6 C), diametrically the opposite of last year, and quite a few people asked, "Will this hurt our plants?"  Possibly, but not fatally.  As late winter advances, buds swell and bulbs send up leaves and buds, and they progressively become less cold hardy.  This varies greatly with the state of plant growth and the temperature.  If peach blossoms were showing pink in such temperatures, they're toast.  If your hellebore blossoms are showing pink, it's no worry.  Even so, the peach tree is hardy and will survive because flower buds as the approach flowering are among the most tender parts of the plant.  Of course the point in having some plants is to have them flower and fruit, but some years the weather gods get you.  Still TPP would rather not have temperatures get so low this time of year, and we may hope that this is the last of the really cold temperatures. 

Field work looms

Our field research season begins as soon as the first shoots appear.  So now a lot of planning has to be done to get all of our ducks in a row so you do the right things in the right order in our usual near futile attempt to wrest some meaningful data from the bosom of Mother Nature.  One difficult problem is that some events are so ephemeral that you don't have long to study them.  Here's an interesting one.  Shoots of the lousewort emerge (soon!) on our prairie with a dark purple color, anthocyanin, but a certain small percentage, roughly about 20 percent, are green with no hint of purple color.  By the time the plants reach flowering season in just a few weeks, the weather has warmed and the purple color faded such that the two forms cannot be distinguished.  Past measurements also show that on cold sunny days, the purple rosettes are a few degrees warmer than the green rosettes.  Does this translate into any resource or reproductive advantage?  This is hard to determine, but that's what we're working on.  And we're also interested to figure out the genetics of these color morphs.  Maybe the green morph is inherited as a recessive gene?  So some reciprocal pollinations will be made.  Hopefully the prairie will be burned before we start doing our field work, and not while we are doing field work!   
Sorry if you saw this blog before.  Apparently using the less than symbol makes the program think everything after it is some sort of html statement and it goes goofy.  What a surprise!

Official first day of spring

It's only Feb. 13th, but spring has officially arrived for the Phactors' gardens.  The calendar means nothing in this reckoning; the first flower has opened.  And the winner is ....wait for it....witchhazel!  The snowdrops only got beat out by a day by the looks of things, while the 3d contender, winter aconite, is lagging behind.  This moves up the date of earliest flowering by quite a few days, 10-12, but haven't checked the data files yet.  This particular shrub is not going to have a large floral display.  It suffered quite a bit of stress last summer and this may have limited the number of flower buds.  So to celebrate TPP walked to campus. 

Holly berries and robins - not according to plan

Two different species of holly, if dutifully pollinated by their accommodating male plants, carry their red fruits through the winter to spring.  Several springs ago, one of the corners of our garden within view of the kitchen table, which is where the bird field guide and field glasses hang out, was filled with cedar waxwings during a couple of day layover to stock up for the next leg of their migration.  This has become an annual event much anticipated by Ms. Phactor who won't even harvest any holly for winter decorations so as not to short change the waxwings.  Today was the springiest day so far this year and the earliest migrant birds started to arrive: pine siskins, fox sparrows, and robins, a big flock of robins, so it really sounded like spring outside.  But unfortunately, the robins have not paid any attention to the plan that says the holly berries are for the later arriving waxwings.  This of course is how it goes with nature who never ever seems to read the plan, especially if it's research.  Had this been a research proposal, it would have started out something like, "The research will be conducted when the cedar waxwings make their annual stop by the study site for feeding on holly berries during their northward migration."  Can't even count the times the Phactor has been stiffed by something just like this. 

Spring has sprung, almost - in February?

Here in the upper midwest February has been a winter month for as long as the Phactor can, uh, uh, oh, something, period.  And both my faithful PC and my fancy satellite-signal updating watch say today is the 17th of February, and the high today will be 50F.  The earliest any plant has ever flowered in the Phactors' gardens, not counting the silly chickweed which is already in flower, is March 1st.  On the route to work a favorite hedgerow, long neglected, is filled with snowdrops and aconite, and they are in full bloom, an event always ahead of the Phactors' shady gardens.  The tens of thousands of scilla that will turn our yard blue are poking up everywhere along with all the other early bulbs.  Still witchhazel usually wins the trophy for earliest in bloom.  It's going to take quite a bit of mental resetting, maybe by satellite signal, to start thinking of February as spring.  A terrifying thought just occurred; field research will start earlier than ever and overlap even more of the semester!  How to ruin a decent morning's late winter revery.  Pass the seed catalogues and a margarita, please, and we'll see if we can adjust. 

NCAA Basketball Prediction - Never Wrong

OK, here's my prediction about the NCAA basketball tournament - a single game the Phactor will not watch. Here in the midwest basketball is a strange pathology; that so many people find it interesting may reflect the gray dullness of their every day lives. It's hard to understand a so-called sport where you don't carry a stick and can't hit anyone. So why did our athletic director get so upset when it was suggested our university replace basketball with ice hockey? Can't say, but now he's off to Kansas which is even crazier about basketball than Lincolnland. This is not a personal boycott of basketball, but spring is definitely here and the gardens (and cats suffering from cabin fever) are demanding my attentions. The winter cleanup, berry brambles, and pruning all need to be done, and today the weather will be good, way too good to be seated in front of a TV watching B-ball games. It's spring! Time for baseball!

An official beginning to spring

It's official! Spring is here! The Phytophactor doesn't much care for the calendar designations of the seasons. What matters is what the garden and gardener do. While taking my morning coffee, spring was declared because the witch hazel (Hamamelis) out beside the garage was in full , cheerful yellow flower. Witch hazels will bloom reliably when every other shrub is nothing more than bare naked twigs, some in the late fall (November) and some in the spring (March). This year the witch hazel even beat the snowdrops for first to bloom. Another witch hazel variety beat this shrub by a week or more, but it's a young plant and only had a couple of flowers after the rabbits pruned it so thoroughly during the winter. Witch hazels also have nice fall color and the grow well in shady areas.

Not to be out done, the Phactor planted spinach, lettuce, and mustard salad greens in boxes that went into the cold frame greenhouse. Any time the daytime temperatures are at or above freezing, cold tolerant plants will grow quite nicely in a cold frame heated only by trapping solar energy. This is a great way to extend the salad season by two months a year (spring and fall). So come on people, what are you waiting for? Spring is here!

March Madness, Cabin Fever, or GDD?

You hear a lot about March madness around this time of year, thus the March part, and apparently the maddness deals with that particular pre-spring mental disorder that finds a sport where tall men in baggy drawers bounce a rubber ball back and forth interesting. There are no sticks and no hitting, so one wonders how it can even be called a sport, but perhaps it’s just the boredom of a long winter setting in where anything more dynamic than melting icicles seems interesting. Maybe this is related to that old malady called cabin fever, that feeling that you’ve been cooped up and hibernating for too long, and like a big ursid short on caffeine you tend to wake up grouchy and feeling like you’d like to take a big clawed paw and knock something silly because you’ve been putting up with it (fill in the blank) all winter.
But for many of us it’s not March madness or cabin fever, but a seasonal occurrence of GDD, gardening deficit disorder, that sense of urgency that begins to invade your psyche, aided and abetted by mail order plant catalogues, a sense that time is a wasting and if you don’t get outside and scratch in some soil soon you’ll go crazy and if you don’t get the garden going you won’t have any salad greens until May, an unacceptable lateness, and this can be especially bad if you happen to cohabit with someone who’s afflicted with March madness, thereby adding insult to injury.
The hints of spring are everywhere even though winter’s grip on the landscape has been tenacious this year. Snow still covers the majority of the estate, but the witch-hazel has begun flowering although most people would walk by the tawny orange-brown flowers without noticing. And under the snow the thousands and thousands of scillas that form a blue blanket across the lawn are poking up their shoots and blue buds that only await a couple of days above freezing to open.
When you go out scouting for these earliest signs of botanical activity, and you cannot walk past a display of seed packets without a gander, you surely have all the signs of GDD. Unfortunately this still calls for a bit of patience, or a heated cold frame, before you can begin gardening in earnest. So until then you simply must endure wating for the last dregs of winter to slowly wane with little to ease your longing, unless maybe you plant the TV remote deep in a potted plant. Or is this just the grouchiness of GDD talking? At least the professional winter sports have the decency to so greatly prolong their seasons that you simply do not care anymore one way or the other, and like a naggingly painful toothache or headache, you just want it to be over. Yes, that’s the GDD talking.

Spring in Lincolnland

Spring here in Lincolnland in the great American Midwest is more of a concept, a theoretical construct, than a reality. As if to prove my point nature provided our flowering bulbs and climatically stupid star magnolias with a snow covering and now plans to back up wintery threats with temperatures several degrees below freezing. And that’s the way it is here as often as not. Enough mild weather emerges from the cocoons of spring to raise your hopes and expectations with green buds and early flowers only to have them dashed down by one more cold front marching eastward like a chilly army bent on defeating spring.

No actual spring occurs here really. Just warring fronts, pushing back and forth, first mild, then bitter, back and forth again, and the war continues until suddenly one day in mid-May summer pushes through and exhausted by all the charging and retreating rests for five months. The weather war is repeated with the opposite outcome in November after summer hangs on well into October. It’s no wonder that those folks who live lives insulated from the reality of nature simply switch the thermostat from heat to cool without opening nary a window. And I know they do this because I’ve bought their houses and struggled to reopen windows painted shut all those years ago when central air was installed.

But no matter how buffered they are, I can’t live that way, so I fall for it every year. I emerge with the first whiff of mild weather to plant and prune and coax with the hopes of a spring and they get buried in a funeral shroud of white snow. Is there anything sadder than a magnolia festooned with drooping brown flowers? And the Phactor knows it’s really our fault for planting them too far north, but the alternative, to live without them, is unthinkable, and so for this reason the movement to landscape with only native plants will fail to capture my heart or enthusiasm. So you live for that one year in two, or three, if we are fortunate, that the magnolias will burst forth in flower without any critcal comment from old man winter.

What's left Tuesday will struggle back, sprouting up from its base, defiant. And the tough plants will once again show their toughness, their raison d'etre for being, yet, I think I shall provide my little coldframe with a bit of thermal assistance tonight, and we may yet enjoy some salad before May.

Know your genera - Lesson 1: Asparagus

Asparagus. How easy is that? You thought botanical Latin names were so difficult, but you have been using some of them all along. Starting with asparagus seems logical alphabetically, but it's also spring, and nothing, nothing is better, and nothing, nothing says spring more than fresh asparagus.

You will probably have to work on pronunciation a bit. The last syllable should probably use an oo vowel sound, so goose instead of gus.

Asparagus is one of the pleasures of the northern temperate zone, but if you want a taste treat to treat, complement this vegetable with a bit of the tropics and have the best of both worlds.

Here's a gastronomic suggestion. Top your lightly steamed asparagus (please do not tell the Phactor you boil it) with a generous dollop of avocado butter.

Avocado butter recipe: 1/2 cup soft butter (1 stick), 1 ripe avocado diced, 2 Tbsp fresh lime juice, 2 Tbsp finely chopped parsley, 2 tsp worcestershire sauce, 1/2 tsp finely minced garlic (1 small clove), and a good dash of Tabasco sauce. Combine in a mixer, place in a covered container and cool to firm up. It will last a week or so fresh in the fridge. It can be frozen and chunks cut off for use if you give it enough time to defrost.

Mammal prognostication gives me paws

Ground hog day is a very funny movie, but in general mammal weather prognosticators do little more to inspire confidence than wooly worms or farmers' almanacs. Which is to say they don't know squat.

First of all what self-respecting mammal comes out of hibernation in early February? That would only happen in places where it doesn't matter whether winter lasts another month and a half or not. Ground hogs certainly don't make February appearances in Minnesota or Maine, and who cares about winter at all in southern Georgia?

As I listened to the radio report from Pennsylvania, it occurred to me that the continuation of winter had nothing whatever to do with shadow-seeing rodents. What makes anyone think a ground hog is afraid of his own shadow? Now maybe the shadow of a golden eagle sweeping by would frighten a golden marmot back into their burrow, but they live so far up in the mountains that early summer has already come to the flat lands. Pity that our local birds of prey are not mighty enough to cast fear into the hearts of ground hogs. It would be quite pleasing if the natural order of things included a predator capable of removing, one by one, the serial occupants of the burrow under my garden shed.

Clearly the answer is not associated with such garden destroying chow hounds.

There on the counter in front of me was the real reason for the continuation of winter. That roll of paper towels is decorated with snow flakes and snowmen, and winter isn't going to end until that great big roll is used up and replaced with towels decorated with little flowers. I am certain that is true. Hear me now and believe me later, the last paper towel will be torn off that roll and just like that the witch hazels will flower. Of course, they don't always wait for the end of winter either.