It seems like just a day or two ago, but ten days ago I divided my 'King Tut' papyrus. It had been in the garage for a couple of months, and I was afraid that I had waited too long to bring a division inside under the lights.
There is nobody who puts out the spring gardening supplies around here earlier than the big box home improvement stores, which in St. Louis are Lowes and Home Depot. I was at HD today to pick up some paint and other stuff not related to gardening, then remembered that I needed a couple of small clay saucers to put under the green onion pots. Glad I did, because as I made my way over to the indoor part of the garden department it looked like they had just rolled out the Burpee seed packet display earlier today.
I received those bamboo rhizomes the other day and I've got some plant cuttings rooted in water that I've been meaning to get into some soil, and since the temperature outside is about the same as the temperature in the garage (low to mid 40's F) it seems like the perfect day to do some potting. Yes, I could pot these up in the garage any day, but it's much nicer and simpler if I can leave the garage door open for more light and easier access to pots that I left outside this winter.
When winter starts getting to me, there are a few things I can do. 1) I can go to my growing table in the basement and get a fix of green. This often reminds me of work I need to do though, as some of the plants on the table need some attention. 2) I can browse my gardening books and seed catalogs, dreaming, planning, and counting the days until the last frost date. 3) I can go through my old garden photos, reminding myself what the yard will look like again in just a few months, when it warms. (It's surprising how quickly I forget each year!)
For those of us gardeners who have been bitten by the bamboo bug, late winter is an exciting time as it marks the start of the bamboo trading season. (Yes I know it's not actually late winter yet here, but it can be for growers in warmer climates.) It's the best time to dig up rhizomes -- the parts of the plant that are underground and will produce new shoots in a few months. For those of us who grow running bamboo, some method of controlling the spread of these rhizomes is needed, and digging them up before the new shoots are produced is a good way to do this.
Do you remember the finch nest on my front porch? It was built in April, used to raise some chicks, then used again in May to rear a second brood. By the time that last chick took flight, the nest was looking pretty sad -- it had quite a bit of bird "droppings" on it and around it. Once the last chick left I waited a while to see if the nest would be used again, but it wasn't, so I could have cleaned it up at that time.
Sometime over the last 10 years or so, owls have moved into our neighborhood. Maybe they've always been here, but before then I wasn't paying enough attention to the natural world around me, but I don't think so. I've always been quite observant of nature, so I think it's more just a matter of getting enough "good" trees around here -- trees that owls would find attractive to nest in.
I've written about various small-plant gardens before, collections of different colors and textures hugging the ground. Perhaps different species of thymes, or a collection of sedums (or better yet, a mixture of the two). Even mosses or lichens can create a wonderful small-scale garden under the right conditions.
At least I hope they do, because today I sprayed them. If you missed it, yesterday I wrote about the aphids on some of my overwintering indoor plants, and took a good close look at them.
It's that time of year again when anybody overwintering outdoor plants inside starts having problems with various insect pests. The critters are there from the start, but it takes a little while for their populations to explode, which is when they first get noticed -- at least by me. In this case, I've got aphids on a couple of small potted bamboos.
Another frigid morning after yesterday's snowfall. Another stay-indoors-with-the-camera day for sure. Know who doesn't get a choice about staying indoors or not? Deer.
This weekend I finally tackled a little project that I should have done two months ago. It's my 'King Tut' Papyrus, one of my favorite plants. It's been sitting in the garage since I moved it there in early November -- it's not cold-hardy so I need to protect it during the winter.
The castor bean plants are some of the most dramatic, eye-catching features in my garden during mid to late summer. Their impressive height (8'-10' or more), giant leaves, and colors (dark reddish leaves and bright red seed pods) make a statement. Their only drawback is their size and resulting susceptibility to storm damage, requiring me to stake them up each year.
Every gardener has some plants that just don't get the attention they need. For whatever reason, we just ignore them. Maybe we're not overly fond of them, or we think they're extra hardy and don't need much care. Sometimes those plants end up looking pretty terrible, or maybe they even die.
The other day when I finally got out into the garden and did my bamboo damage survey I had to photograph the fluffy Miscanthus grass seed heads too. To my eye these start out looking quite uninteresting in the late summer and fall when they emerge, but then really become attractive during the winter. They curl and fluff up, probably to facilitate their spread by the wind.
Last month I posted about one non-hardy plant that I had forgotten about and left out through a couple of freezes: my jasmine. My fix in that post was to prune the plant hard and hope that it would send out new growth. For the past several weeks I've been thinking that I took the wrong approach:
Today's post might not appeal to everybody. It will be long, at least if measured by the number of photos (41), and somewhat painful for me to put together. That's because today's post is a survey of all of my unprotected bamboos to see how they're holding up to the winter so far. This isn't about the bamboos that are in the greenhouse, nor is it about the plants that I covered with plastic for the winter.
I haven't been much in the mood to go outside and walk around the yard lately. It's probably because of the weather -- bitter cold might be "fun" when you're reading about it, but it's not so nice when you have to live in it. Fortunately I don't have to live in it (except in tiny doses) because I work at home and don't have to leave the house for days at a time.
Actually, there was ice more than once, but not recently. I just decided to post these photos from an ice storm that hit in 2006 because they felt appropriate. It's pretty darn cold right now: 13ºF as I write this (remember I usually write the morning's post the evening before) heading for a low of 5ºF.
Sunday morning I woke up too early -- much, much too early. The clock said 4:00 AM, and I was wide awake. I knew this was going to be a problem later in the day so I tried for about 30 minutes to fall back asleep, but it wasn't happening. Reluctantly I got out of bed and went to the computer. Read a few blogs, perused the day's headlines, looked through some old photos, and played some computer games. After two and a half hours on the computer I got bored and hungry, so made my way upstairs.
A few years back (in 2006 actually, the year I did so many garden projects) I decided to redo my mom's garden for her. This would be a big change for me because it was quite a small area.
I've had this Ming Aralia houseplant for a couple of years now. I've seen large specimens with price tags of nearly $100, so a few years ago I spent $5 on a small plant. It grew quite well for a few years, but then during the past year it started having problems.
Does your garden have toads living in it? Mine does. Oh, it's not that they're all over the place and I see them every day. I do see them occasionally though, and I like to think that the reason I don't see them more often is they're carefully camouflaged, hungrily hopping around beneath the cover of green I've provided for them. Sometimes though, conditions are right and I get much more exposure to toads than usual. May 2009 was one of those times -- in fact, it was the time when I learned more about toads than ever before.
As I was looking through my photo archives to find a couple of specific images, I came across a few different images that never made it into posts. I also found a few older images (from before I started the blog) that I'd like to share with you today. I'll do this from time to time, as I have a more older garden photos that are worth sharing too.
In the world of plants, there is a lot to love. There's so much variety in size, shape, color, fragrance, form, and dozens of other factors that those of us who love growing plants can't help but find a few favorites -- plants we are just drawn to for some reason. For me, it's typically the big vigorous plants that you kind of need to fight with and show who's boss: bamboos, elephant ears, big ornamental grasses, vines.
Although I feel like I could work in the garden every day, all year long, it's probably good that there are a few months during the winter when there's not much I can do. It's a great time to inspect all of the tools that I'm too busy using during the growing season too even think about, let alone inspect or replace.
Last winter was the first year for my temporary greenhouse, and I was out there almost every day checking the temperature, seeing how the bamboos were doing, and just enjoying all of the green during the blah days of winter. I'm not sure what's different this year -- maybe the novelty of having a plastic sheeted refuge from the cold has worn off, maybe I'm too busy with other things, or maybe since the bamboo in the yard is larger this year I've got enough green to look at -- whatever the reason I haven't been going out to the greenhouse very much this year.
After shutting down the stream due to sub-freezing weather returning, I noticed that a water-filled bucket had frozen over again. This was not surprising.
When I added the artificial "stream" water feature to my garden in 2006, I immediately fell in love with the atmosphere it created. Its quiet, bubbly voice made a big impact, adding a calmness to the patio area that I never would have thought possible. It became so integral to the surroundings that when its first winter came around I did whatever I could to keep that water flowing.
After the snow melted in our recent "heatwave", I was checking out one of my bamboos that was bent to the ground in the snow, just to see if there was any damage. I didn't see any problems -- no bent or broken culms or branches. I did notice something interesting though. First, a little setup...
The weather the last few days has been unseasonably warm, and with a temperature around 65ºF and a line of storms moving into the area, I thought I should do something about this mess behind the house:
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