WHAT I LOVE RIGHT NOW

I find a quiet moment every day to stroll through the garden and contemplate every little change. It occurred to me last night that this might be a tad strange. Really, not much happens in the course of a day. But when something does happen, when your garden literally changes because certain plants are done blooming and others are slowly taking the stage, those moments are really exciting.

Planning for those moments isn’t easy, it takes a lot of time, consideration, constant tweaking and some good old fashioned luck! I have tried to achieve a garden achieves those transitions in an interesting way. For example, I for one don’t like color everywhere all the time. I find it very unsettling. I prefer a subtle shifting of interest throughout a season. And I believe that interest shouldn’t always be defined as something that blooms, which often in my garden it doesn’t. You could have a moment where nothing is blooming and let your foliage combinations create the drama.

Right now I’m experiencing a subtle shift. My late blooming tulips have finally been pulled and replaced with annual color and the rest of my spring bloomers (Daffodils, Anemone, Jacobs Ladder, and Brunnera) are done, adding their foliage alone to the overall composition.
What has taken their place are some of my favorite plants period. Here is a list of what I love right now and why I love them!

GERANIUM ‘Karmina’: I don’t think there is a prettier long blooming perennial for shady gardens. It has such a wonderful massing quality, so I use it frequently for a groundcover. When it blooms it is a carpet of delicate pink flowers hovering over beautiful foliage. What kills me even more is its fall interest…its leaves a gorgeous palette of oranges and reds.

PEONY ‘Bunker Hill,’ ‘Best Man’ and Bowl of Beauty’: I adore peonies and if I had more room I would have masses of them everywhere. What I find most appealing aren’t necessarily their blooms, which can be somewhat fleeting. It is the foliage it provides your garden for the rest of the season. Few perennials offer such a mass of glossy dark green leaves. A note about staking: I have never had to stake my peonies once they have established themselves (3-4 years). If you plant them in a mass and / or have other plants around them to add support, they will prop themselves up.

ALLIUM ‘Giganteum’: One of my favorite show stoppers! I planted about 7 of these huge bulbs three years ago, and they seem to be multiplying. They are somewhat of a folly when they pop up, which is why I like them. After they are done blooming, leave them…the shape is just as interesting when it isn’t in color! Once they begin to deteriorate (the stalks will turn yellow) cut them back all the way to the ground as you would any bulb.

ALCHEMILLA mollis: This is another plant that is just about to bloom, but I plant it for its AMAZING leaves. It has a hosta like habit, likes shady and sunny spots, and deer usually will not eat it! Most photographs I have seen show it when it is most interesting, after watering. Because of the texture of its leaves, water sits on it in large droplets, creating something quite picturesque. It is a must for almost every garden!

HEUCHERA ‘Green Spice’: Heuchera is another plant that likes shady conditions that deer usually won’t eat. There are some spectacular varieties out there, but there is something about ‘Green Spice’ that I just cannot get enough of. Its mounding habit is comprised of silvery leaves, edged in dark green with burgundy veining…need I say more? Right now it is about to bloom and its pink bell shaped flowers stand atop 3’ stems. The show is amazing, but when it is over you are left with leaves that are calmly beautiful…adding to your garden by complimenting what is around it.

PHOTOS (from top): Alchemilla mollis; Bunker Hill Peony and Allium

VEGETABLE GARDEN

My husband has a new pet project…his vegetable garden. I describe it as his because he has spent the past eight months reading books about methods (Smith; The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible), researching potential harmful pests, and planning what to plant. It has been a chore just to watch!

Although I grew up around vegetable gardeners, and I mean serious ones, I’ve never really had the space or the time to get organized and produce something meaningful. I stuck to growing the basics, what I loved to eat. Green bush beans, plum tomatoes, zucchini, and lots and lots of herbs would pleasantly coexist with perennials in my sunniest bed and I was really content with my modest yields.

Everything changed last year when my husband got involved. He wanted to do more, more, more! So we tried to add other crops to our bed. We transplanted a few perennials to make room and off we went. The results were disastrous.

First, we did not have a plan for what we wanted to plant. Other than what I usually plant being a given, we simply went to the garden center and picked out what looked interesting. The lesson learned was that some vegetables are just not a good fit for the small house garden. Brussels sprouts, peas, corn all take an extraordinary amount of room to produce enough yields for a single meal. The brussel sprouts did not produce one sprout and the peas gave us about ten pods, but the plants I pulled out at the end of the season were as big as a small Volkswagens!

Where we had some crops that were all show, we had others that produced so much I was toting two bags to work each week full of bounty we could never eat!

My father’s side of the family had a garden that took up half of their entire property; I am not kidding. It really isn’t all that rare in his hometown of Highwood; that’s just what you did to feed your family. They planted a ton of tomatoes so that we could spend countless hours in my grandmother’s basement canning homemade tomato sauce that the entire family would then use all winter. At its peak, under the care of one of its best head gardeners, my Uncle George, we had 135 plants. That’s a lot of tomatoes.

With this in mind, my husband and I decided we would plant 6 plants. I mean if they planted in the hundreds, we could easily handle 6! Well, if you have ever planted tomatoes and been successful you know that we planted enough for a large family of people who love tomatoes, not for two people. We did the same with zucchini and cucumbers.

Then there were the specialty crops that produced well, but aren’t really something you’d store for long term. For example, I planted a row of radishes. Probably around thirty or so matured, all at the same time. By week two I’d had enough radishes for a lifetime. I wasn’t about to freeze the radishes, so off to friends they went!

We learned a lot of valuable lessons last year and I’m certain will learn more this year, especially by listening more intently to our family’s sage advise and relying on my husband’s countless pages of research.

My husband’s list of most important things he has implemented in our garden:
Contemplate raised beds
Creating raised beds with mulch paths in between has transformed our little garden. Vegetable’s root systems are delicate and by giving them their own space, they won’t get trampled on, and you avoid damage and long term compaction.

Use natural solutions for pest management
There are lots of organic products out there…some of which might not actually be organic, so research them with diligence. Then you have to determine their value through trail and error. We are using two products this year…Neptune’s Harvest is a fish emulsion (www.neptunesharvest.com) and Use BT Worm killer, a natural bacteria. Use BT for the first two weeks after planting for cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower to keep worms from destroying your tender plants.

You can also try employ a method of pairing certain plants together to discourage infestations. Try pairing basil with tomatoes you may throw off the scent of predators. Marigolds can be used in the same manor.

Rotate your crops
Insects are lazy and they won’t want to go far to eat so if you keep the crops moving you may keep more bugs away. Sometimes diseases also stay in soils for several years, by moving crops it helps prevent that. Always be aware that swapping crops in the same family, like sweet onions and leeks, isn’t a true crop rotation.

Time your planting appropriately and get more from your garden
Some seeds, like lettuce and spinach, can be planted in the cool season, like early April. Once harvested, you can plant another crop for fall harvesting.

Research research research!
Know what is better to plant from seed and what to buy from your local garden center. Herbs have a difficult time germinating, so definitely purchase them as plants. When you buy plants, buy them in 4.5 inch containers and make certain that the roots are not coming out of the bottom of containers. This means the plant is already stressed before you get it in your garden and it may not perform as well. Below is a representative list…
SEED
Cucumber, Zucchini, Lettuce, Spinach, Beans, Radishes, Carrots, Melons, Squash
PLANTS
All herbs, broccoli, leeks, onions from sets, peppers, tomatoes

Moisture
Vegetables like a constant even supply moisture throughout the season so you don’t get misshapen vegetables.

NEXT WEEK: MY FAVORITE PLANTS, RIGHT NOW