Muck About

Narcissus for the Holidays and Beyond

There is nothing better for the spirit than flowering plants in winter. One of my favorites, paper-whites, I grow on a table near the door, helping make winter look like spring and chasing the January blahs away. They take everything winter throws at them as they sit under the protection of a deck cover.  This year I planted the cultivar Narcissus 'Ziva'. The painted pot sits on my deck and keeps blooming well into winter. Other filled containers, I gave away to friends for their own entryways or decks.

I plant the fresh bulbs in regular potting soil or gravel about mid October.  This guarantees they will be blooming before Christmas. In containers with no drainage, I use marbles or glass chips if I am growing them in water only. Filling each pot with as many bulbs as will fit, without their touching each other, gives the best display. With shallow containers, I barely cover the bottom of the bulbs with potting medium; in deeper ones, they are buried up to their necks. Planted in soil, these two containers were left outside under the protection of the deck cover until they began to blossom. They are staged in a prominent place for my enjoyment until the flowers fade.

For bulbs growing in gravel or other soil-less medium, treat with alcohol to stunt their growth keeping their stems short while not affecting their beautiful flower display.  When finished blooming, toss the bulbs, preferably on the compost heap, and buy new bulbs each year. It makes an elegant, yet inexpensive display, or use for gifts each year, especially when recycling your pots.

 

Click on images to enlarge.

 

This Side Up

At times I complain about how difficult it is to empty out a package full of plants. Upon arrival, a well-packed box is not easy to unload. After opening a few boxes mishandled by various shipping companies, I changed my grumbling tune to notes of appreciation .

A parcel full of plants came in from a mail order nursery and stood sideways at my door, even though bright red stickers pointed another way up. Fortunately, the nursery packed it soundly and no injury came to its contents. You never know which side actually stays up when these boxes pass through a shipping system.  When the bottom goes up or the sides come down, the little plants may wind up roots to the wind, but first-class packaging means the contents remain intact. 

Cistus Nursery in Oregon  is responsible for this well-packaged box. All the treasures within came out in fine health, with no battered leaves or spilt soil found.

 

Colocasia esculenta 'Fontanesii'

Its common name, black stem elephant ear, may say it has a black stem, but it really is a dark purple hue, so dark it appears to be black. Colocasias are often called elephant ears; however, when I lived in Hawaii we knew these evergreen, big leaf plants as taro. Grown as a vegetable food, taro must be cooked or steeped in water to remove the toxic calcium oxalate before it is eaten. For many people, including myself, unless they ate poi (made from the taro plant) as a staple food when they were children, they don’t care for the bland, starchy taste.

These bulbs are hardy in USDA zones 8-11, yet Sunset’s Western Garden book does not rate them hardy in the maritime Northwest. However, a local nursery owner advised me to use a two-year-old plant, grow in humus rich soil and mulch heavily, and see them suvive in Sunset zone 5.  My plants will be three years old this next season; I will experiment with this plant and see how it does in the garden. In our climate, the plant will die back to the ground over winter; it won’t be evergreen like it is in Hawaii. It may take a few winters before I know if it is hardy enough to survive. In the meantime, while my experiment waits for an unusually cold winter, I will grow more in containers and winter them over in the greenhouse.

The flower gives it away that colocasias are in the aroid family, Araceae. The yellow flower looks similar to many in the family, such as our much maligned Northwest native skunk cabbage, Lysichiton americanus. Unlike our native son, this colocasia flower has the scent of papaya, according to Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina. I did not catch a fragrance on my own plant, but then I might have been too nervous to sniff around a skunk-cabbage-like flower. Next time it flowers, I will gingerly inhale its odor, just in case Avent is pulling our collective legs about the reward of papayas after a deep inhale.

To grow the tallest stems and larger leaves, give them constant moisture, humus rich soil and lightly fertilize once a month. You can grow these bulbs in containers, or plant them in a pot and sink them into a water garden. They add a tropical flair wherever you plant them. The plants send out runners, with a small leaf on the end, that appears to be stems flopped over. Use the runners to propagate more plants by allowing the runner to coil around the inside of the pot until fully ripe. Divide the suckers out and plant on in a one gallon pot and overwinter in a sunny, frost-free space. Slowly acclimate outdoors after last frost.

 

Western Garden Book

If you didn’t receive Sunset’s updated 2007 Western Garden Book for Christmas and you garden in the west, you need to give one to yourself.

Sunset divides the west into many unique climate zones. Unlike the USDA zones, which are based on eleven different cold temperature ranges, Sunset zones take into account many climate influences for one.  USDA zone 8 may be useful for knowing how cold it gets in our Pacific Northwest region, but some areas in Arizona get just as cold.  Sunset recognizes the need to differentiate climates in ways beyond how cold average winter temperatures are.  The book gives the maritime Northwest zones 4, 5 and 6 plus 17 in the lower coastal area of Oregon.  Zones in the mountains, Puget Sound, or Willamette Valley vary enough to give us clues to how well plants will perform in each of these places. This alone is reason enough to buy the newest edition. The encyclopedia of plants is another good reason.   

With plant listings showing how each perform in our western gardens, along with detailed descriptions, this reference is a boon to all gardeners, especially the beginner. Eight thousand updated plant listings, 500 of them new to this edition, and many new features, comprise a welcome reference guide for any garden library west of the Rocky Mountains.

Western Garden Book

Faces in the Garden

 

Insects are an integral part of the garden, the good, the bad and the bugly. I learned many years ago, that the best way to keep pests from becoming a major problem in my garden is to strike a balance by including them all. It’s a fascinating miniature world.

Pollinators come in many forms. Many I believe are beautiful when you look at their markings; some are goofy looking in a cartoon character sort-of-way.  Here are a couple I captured digitally.

Two of my favorite images are of this green lacewing, a predator of insects with a voracious appetite. It was found crawling all over a lilium flower. One of the most beautiful insects this side of butterflies, in my opinion and another good reason not to use pesticides. Encourage these beauties to take up residence in your garden.

 

Another predator we all know and love is the ladybug with an appetite for aphids. This angle makes the beetle look like it’s wearing a Darth Vader like helmet and a super hero  red cape.  They are super heroes in the garden.

 

Chiastophyllum oppositifolium

Why is this wonderful six-inch high perennial not better known? The spoon shaped, succulent,
evergreen leaves look great year-round and when you view its flowers in the spring.  It evokes the feeling that you just went outside on a warm spring day, after being cooped up all winter. Perhaps its because its an alpine or rock garden plant, people believe it will need to grow in a specialized rock garden. It does need well-drained soil; however, it grows quite well in regular garden soil. I grow it in sun or light shade, but prefer the way it looks and grows in the shade.

 

This perennial politely spreads around and is easy to pull out and transplant to other areas. My initial collection I started from seed and carried it over to a new garden ten years ago. It grows under a coral bark maple (Acer palmatum ‘Sangokaku’) mixing with baby tears (Soleirolia soleriolii). After the flowers fade, the foliage on the stem it grows on takes on  tan and red hues. I pull the flower stem and the faded floret of leaves out and new green  foliage takes it place.

A Few Clever Things

Oh what fun it is to stumble across something clever or unexpected in a garden. Something tiny, something shiny, an accessory to liven up the garden and give it character.

Here are a few of my favorite finds in gardens. Click on the image for a larger view.

Stumped? Make tables.

Topping a stump with a large flagstone, was my friend Annie's way to turn an unfortunate tree removal into a functional table top.

This brick walk was seen on a garden tour in Victoria B.C. It was one of my favorite finds. Unfortunately, I don't have the name of the garden it came from, so I can't credit the artist.

I came across this shed in an open field on Bainbridge Island in Washington state. This would be a wonderful fantasy for a child playhouse, or a functional, but fun tool shed.

I watched the rust take over this recycled art piece in my own garden, and it just became better.

A foot carved in pumice floats on a sea of aquatic fairy moss (Azolla).

I'm a seed starting fool

"The miracle of the seed and the soil is not available by affirmation; it is only available by labor." -Jim Rohn

I love the promise of a seed. I have so many packets of them, I don't know what to do. Spring fever in the middle of winter means I sow too much in the greenhouse and many times, I don’t have room in the garden to plant them all.  Ammi majus, Cosmos, Asarina or Lathyrus in bright colored packets, or private collected packets of rare and unusual plants with a label thrown on, sit on a refrigerator shelf, waiting its turn to be sown.  Just how many packets of sunflower seed do I need?  I have 20 varieties waiting for me to trial.  I have a tendency for obsessive/compulsive behavior when it comes to selecting sweet pea (Lathyrus) varieties.  I could buy a mixed packet, but then how would I enjoy a sweet pea named  'April in Paris' or 'Zorja Rose'.

I have what I loosely call a cutting garden.  Sometimes it's a patch of weeds, and other times I am ambitious and fill it with flowers for the vase.  Mostly, I use it to trial annuals, biennials and bulbs for cutting gardens.  There is nothing more satisfying then filling a vase of flowers from the garden.  The cutting garden allows me to trial all kinds of seeds to see which ones I like the best.  Problem is, unless it's a poor performer I tend to like them all. I must confess a plant that gives a straight strong stem without staking is preferred. Chances are I won’t get all the plants staked, so the ones with the straight stems usually are the ones I cut.  However, the crooked stem flower that hangs down with a twist can add some character to a vase of flowers.

The other reason I like to sow seed is it gives me an opportunity to grow many plants for not a lot of money. I can grow a quantity of one perennial for a drift in the garden for less than what it would cost to buy just one plant.  The savings can be substantial. The downside is I can’t buy seed for many cultivars of perennials or clones of plants selected for better color than the standard.

Here are a few choice plants to grow easily from seed. Click on thumbnails to view larger image.

Ammi visnaga 'Green Mist' or bishop's flower

A. visnaga adds a ferny, delicate look to bouquets, and lasting three to five days as a cut flower. Cut the flowers in the morning with 80% of the flowers opened for best results.

Campanula medium 'Calycanthema'  or Canterbury bells

This classic biennial is excellent as a cut flower and a must for the old-fashioned cottage garden. The biennial thrives in our cool maritime climate of the Pacific Northwest.

Cosmos bipinnatus Psyche Mix 

This is one of the largest and showiest flowers of all the cosmos. As a cut flower, it has a long vase life. Even the leaves serve well as greenery for the bouquet.

Helianthus annuus 'Titanic' or sunflower

'Titanic' has a fully double flower that commands attention in the garden. To me it looks like a chrysanthemum on steroids.

Lathyrus odoratus 'Mollie Rilestone'  or sweet pea

There is a beautiful antique appearance to the very fragrant flowers that are born on long stems of this exhibition quality sweet pea. The standards have a rose picotee on a cream background, and rippled edges. The wings are white with a pink edge.

Lupinus hartwegii ssp. cruikshankii 'Sunrise' or lupine

Grow this and you too can do the Monty Python chant: "Not another bloody lupine!"

 

Ricinus communis 'Gibsonii' or castor bean

This poisonous genus is a tropical plant, which we treat as an annual in our maritime climate. From a small seed that resembles a tick, it quickly grows into an imposing plant in the landscape.

The Wonderful Foliage of Chamaecyparis

Chamaecyparis, commonly called false cypress, comes in all sizes--from evergreen tiny shrubs to large trees. What I enjoy most about this genus and its species and cultivars is the variety of beautiful foliage.  In the winter garden, the plants present their soft-looking, scale-like leaves, some even changing colors.

In honor of our winter gardens, here are a few representatives with marvelous foliage in this genus. Click on thumbnail to view a larger image.

C. thyoides 'Heather Bun'

Height: 6-10 feet

Width: 4-5 feet

C. pisifera 'Snow'

Height: 36-48 inches

Width: 36 inches

C. nootkatensis 'Variegata'

This will eventually reach 60 feet.

C. lawsoniana 'Blue Surprise'

Height: 6 feet

width: 1.5 feet

Introduction

Some days I just want to upload and share photographs about plants, flowers, or Pacific Northwest gardens.  Other days I just want to write something frivolous. A blog will give me an opportunity to do so outside my Rainy Side Gardeners duties and the Rainy Zone newsletter.  Here you will find me in the raw; no copy editor will be red penning these notes.  I want to muck about -- a British term -- to spend time idly; putter. After the hard work of creating and maintaining a garden, sometimes it's just time to enjoy and share with others.