Last Day of March

This thermometer is on the south side of my house.


Above the garden of earthly delights-- indoors...

... and that's garlic growing through the snow.



A beautifully-formed Seckl pear.



A Lapin sweet cherry I am torturing into an espalier. The guide strings are attached to a couple bricks. Twice a year I review, prune, and adjust my guides and bricks. This will be the third year in the ground for this cherry. I am anticipating getting a couple pounds of cherries this year. I had about a dozen cherries last year. I surely do not want a 30' tall sweet cherry in my yard, so, "it's my way or the compost, Mr. Lapin!"


Those are the grapes I need to prune. I cut away a lot of the vine in the fall to prevent the over-wintering of insects and pathogens. It also allows me a better view on what I need to prune in the spring and saves the plant's spring energy reserves, while still allowing some of the mass of the plant to provide winter protection. I grow these grapes on wire strung between two posts placed eight feet apart. The posts are four feet tall.


My handsome dwarf Honeycrisp apple tree.

Today is the last day of March. I've lived in a couple different zones. Some places I have not only raked my lawn, but mowed it as well, once more than a couple times! I almost always have it raked here in zone 4. Not this year, though! Although I am starting to see brown grass peek out from underneath the snow, and my female boxer has taken an inordinate interest in the male dogs in the neighborhood (a sure harbinger of spring around this house!), spring is not here.

The sun is shining, though, today! Applause!

This weekend we are forecast to return to sleet and snow.

Typically, my apricot is blooming in about 20 days. That is hard to conceive!

It is still difficult to get out in the yard. Any sort of clean-up of storm-damaged, rabbit and mouse gnawed shrubs has to wait. I have hydrangea with swelling buds that I can not cut back because I really have no where to go with the clippings. Generally, the village begins picking up yard waste on the first Monday in April-- four days from today!

We are behind. When spring finally arrives, I am afraid we will be leaf-frogging into summer in the blink of an eye.

Edible Ornamentals and One of My Favorite Public Gardens

The Allen Centennial Garden on the UW-Madison campus is one of the smallest public gardens I regularly visit. It packs a lot into its small space, including an area dedicated to edible ornamentals, a pinetum, a scree garden, and much more.

Since winter is holding fast to Wisconsin, although I did see a bare spot in my yard today with inch tall tulips (insert wild applause, chanting, and crowd adoration for the coming of spring here!), it still only worked its way up to freezing. If you are a glass full type, maybe we could saying "melting temperatures".

Enjoy!


This first picture at the Allen shows a variety of cabbage, and kale, an artichoke in the foreground and some grains. I think they are buckwheat, sorghum, and millet.


This picture features Redbor kale and edible flowers.


This bed is primarily herbs. Not sure why they would mix in a poisonous plant like datura in an herb garden. Datura is medicinal, but best left to chemists, not gardeners.




The limey-yellow plant with the pinkish-orange bloom is a decorative-leaved geranium.




The next few pictures show some great plant combinations from the scree and trough gardens. Some of these plants are "temperperennials", meaning not annuals but not hardy to this zone.




Let me know if you need the name of something. I can identify almost all of these cultivars, if you are actively looking to obtain a particular specimen pictured here.

Global Gardening and Gloom and Doom

My Dad had an aunt that herself was just a girl, I think about eight years old, the year the volcano Krakatoa erupted. I think that was in 1888, I'm sure you can google that for the details. The first hand account, passed to my Dad when she was ancient and my dad a young man, and second hand to me, is that it froze every month of the year that year.

It was referred to as "The Year Summer Never Came."

For gardeners everywhere, this is the scary story. It is the monster in the closet. The year 1888 was an abnormalty. Its lessons were recounted, not stories of the Dust Bowl that from my viewing of the History Channel must have been incredible to have experienced. This tells me that the Dust Bowl did not affect us here in the middle of Wisconsin and the eruption of Krakatoa did.

Here in zone 4, we have a scant 100 to 120 days frost free growing season. Somewhere in the next 100 miles north of us, you can not grow corn. The growing season is not long enough. Corn taskes takes a fullness of days we can never predict. Farmers who get it wrong are not farmers very long.

The weather is more than a topic of casual conversation. We track it in our journals. We record things like snowfalls, first and last, the return of the robins, the return of the sandhill cranes. It is with dark fore-shadowing that I look up and see the first vee of geese going south in the early days of September. A dark shadow of the long Wisconsin winter chills me right to my spine, no matter how bright and blue the day may be.

So, it is not without more than idle curiosity that I read articles about earthquakes and tsunamis changing the tilt and rotation of the earth or wonder of the effects of the Icelandic volcano that halted air traffic to parts of Europe last summer.

Gardeners connect to the earth. We connect to our local seasons and zones. The Central Sands are my native earth. Global warming does not scare me, but stories about possible sudden and dramatic climate shifts do. Changes in weather that could come in a single season and for which would be impossible to plan.

Winter has held us in thrall here much too long. Summer-- I'm waiting!

Pruning Grapes

(To see the post where I actually pruned my grapes and took pictures, click here.)

Typically, the last week in March into the first few days of April, I am pruning my grapes. This year though, there is still a foot of snow on the ground and it has been COLD. Very cold, like I think it got down to four degrees above zero last night. Today, the mercury inched "up" to freezing. Grapes should be pruned when the buds are starting to swell, but they have not started to unfurl. If you wait much longer the vine will expend energy on growth you will end up trimming off. But the grapes are very, very dormant.

Trimming the grapes will have to wait.

I have two varieties of wine grapes, Othello and Frontenac. Both have seeds. They are perfectly hardy. I planted them about four years ago. Last year I got enough grapes to make about six quarts of grape juice. I found a receipe that works well and is low on effort and time.

This year, I am planting a seedless grape as well, Red Reliance.

What to do in the garden, today, March 28?

Nothing.

Still over a foot of snow covers anything that remotely looks like a garden here in the Central Sands region of Wisconsin, zone 4. My Dad says we are 20 degrees below average temperature. He's a farmer. He should know; he's been growing things a tad longer than I have.

So today, my garden activities center around my seedlings in my growing racks in my extra space in my loft. I thought I would include some pictures of this growing rack, dimensions, and building tips.








Although I do quite a bit of hammering, sawing, nailing, etc.; I am far from a pro. I have built a deck ("cobble"might be a good word there), built a couple fences, and remodeled more than one or two bathrooms, and have developed some skills. I am far from a finish/trim carpenter, but this light rack was easy to build.

It measures about 20" deep, about 5 feet high, and 44" wide. I built it using (4) 2" x 2 x 8' pieces. I cut 36" off each of the 8' pieces and then cut the 36" pieces in half again. Having those (8) 18" piece is key to getting the right dimensions as I use 4 standard 10" by 20" flats without drain holes to keep everything nice and dry.

As this light rack holds four trays across (the width part), I purchased (4) 1" by 4" board and cut each in half. If I was doing it over I would go with 6 though. With six, each shelf would have three of these as tray supports.

I assembled this rack with screws, pre-drilling my holes and "L-brackets". These L-brackets on the corners with the 18" pieces top and bottom and two equi-distant spaces between form the sides of my rack. The brackets are key. Pre-drilling is important. Don't skip that step, and it helps to have a helper to hold things together during assembly.

I had the screws in my cast-offs bucket. I purchased the wood and brackets (8 in all, one at each corner.) I think the rack itself cost me just about $20.

I had a couple shop lights to start. I hang these with chain. I prefer to use 2 per shelf. If you use one only put 2 trays on the shelf and put them parallel with the width. The chains are important to keep the lights within 4" of the growing seedlings. I use regular florescent light bulbs with about 3,500 lumens. I don't use special light bulbs. The lumen thing is important, though. The higher the lumen the better. I think the minimum you should attempt to grow with is 3,200. A couple years back I bought a light meter and it really helped me nail down the issues I had with whether there was enough light or not.



I plug all my lights into a circuit panel things with a switch so I can flip one switch to turn a whole rack on or off. That plugs into a GFI-wired outlet. This space is planned to eventually be a bathroom, so the GFI-circuit makes sense for now, watering plants and using lights are not a good combo; and in the future for the bathroom. I have tripped the circuit more than once with dripping water.

The second plug in the outlet is where I plug in my one heat mat. This allows me to use the heat mat even at night to encourage those seed to sprout, rather than plug it into the light panel and turn it off. I also use two screws to attach/stabilize it to the wall.

My son, who was then probably 14 and had never built anything before, helped hold pieces of this together when I built it a couple years back. Yesterday, he and I were out shopping for a couple of new bulbs for the rack. We walked by a really fancy, metal, pre-made rack priced at a couple hundred dollars, and he commented, "Wow, Mom! Ours is really nice, and it holds twice as many trays as this one and only cost us a few bucks!"

Yes. I thought. Yes, it did.

Disguising a Drain Field

I was asked to design and plant a cutting garden which would attract hummingbirds, bees, and other birds. This garden also needed to disguise a drain field, not have roots which would encroach on the proper drainage of the field, and would not hinder pumping of the tank in the future.

This rules out any trees and shrubs. It needed to hide sewer caps and to screen the view to the road. This garden was planted in late August. These pictures are from September of its first full year.

For spring color, there are drifts of tulips, about 350 in all. Tulips are followed by columbines, daisies, colorful heuchera, phlox, hosta, coneflowers, both sedum 'Autumn Joy' and 'Matrona', a few daylilies, and grasses.





The garden is 30' by 40' features a crushed granite path and a seating area. I think it is a successful way to mask a drainage field, provide long season color to a yard, and attract bird and bees.

Picturing our Dream Gardens

How many of you actually know what this is?


Maybe now?


Not really a clue, huh?

I'm a big fan of digital cameras as garden tool. I have a fairly low-end 4 mega-pixel Kodak. I have taken nearly 4,000 pictures with it, mostly plant and garden related although there are some of my son playing basketball.

Plant pictures are easier to take. My son and that basketball move around way too much, even if he does play "post".

Every gardener with a digital camera can tell you something they did that improved their garden or containers because of a picture they took. It sure beats taking notes on a piece of paper at botanical gardens, too.

I have to say, though, to capture the unusual and wonderful, my digital camera can not be beat. I think this is probably one of those garden Kodak moments. The "moment" lasted 4 to 5 weeks in this case, but pictures are all I have.

So those of you looking at the attached pictures, how many guessed astilbe?

Yup, This is an astilbe. It broke dormancy a couple years ago, "in the pink of health", we could say. It was about 1/3 the height, 1/3 the leaf size. A pretty bright pink-- this has not been photo-shopped. It stayed this color about 5 weeks, at which time I got the courage up to attempt to divide it. After I divided it, it began to become much whiter only to then become tinged with green. It eventually went almost entirely green except with a bit of pink/red tinge on the edges of the leaves. It bloomed pink with a normal size and shaped flower, unremarkable even. It was bushier and the leaf edges much more jagged and almost pleated.

An incredible shade of pink with spring bulbs past and everything else unfurling their bit of new spring green, it seemed a moment caught in time in contrast.

It would have been wonderful if had repeated the next spring, but no...

It was a Kodak moment...

11 Degrees Fahrenheit

Geum


My unnamed climbing rose


Veronica 'Waterperry Blue'


Iberis

That was my morning temperature. Today is March 23rd. By the sunny afternoon it got to a whomping 33 degrees. Average is 42.

Bring it.

While that last foot of snow is dawdling, we here in Wisconsin are all antsy for spring. Here are some pictures of warmer days to tide us over.

Yet Another Snow Day in Zone 4 Central Wisconsin

Or "What to Do in the Garden in March, part 2"...

Sleep. We wish.

It's official. They canceled school. It's a snow day. That means my mother called and my brother can't make it to the farm to milk cows. Can my son come out and help Grandpa? He goes a bit grudgingly. It means here, in town, with such limited space, he has to shovel out my car and chip off the ice before he can get to his car. I don't have the heart to give up garden space to park his car next to instead of in front of mine. I already have my pick-up taking up space as it is.

I think we got about 3" of sleet, snow, and ice last night, another 2" to 4" of snow forecast for today.

So what to do in the garden in March? Not a lot apparently. I can usually count on frost-free, snow-free ground by the second week in April. That's not to say it won't snow. I just doesn't stay more than a day at that point. I did notice the snow had melted enough yesterday morning before this all began to see my garlic was 3" tall. It's a sign of spring to be sure. I had ordered a couple different kinds of garlic from www.wegrowgarlic.com last fall and planted them next to my deck the beginning of November.

I like to can. Canning, for me is a quality and value-added project: baby cucumber gherkins, roasted sweet red pepper spread, hamburger dills with big chunks of dilled onion, dilly beans with a couple of carrot spears in every jar, salsa, tomato juice and sauce. All these things call for garlic. Fresh is best, but at my "local" grocery store fresh is "produced in China".

Produced in China?

Well, last fall I decided I was definitely going to grow my own garlic. I was delighted that I could purchase my garlic starts from a Wisconsin company. We Grow Garlic grows more garlic than even I could imagine. And they seem really excited to do it. They have more kinds than I can quickly count. They COLLECT garlic. Do you know anyone who collects garlic?

I chose Thermadrone and China Purple. Later this summer, I'll tell you how they grew for me.

I did reserve a few of each for cooking through the winter. They sell garlic untreated, so eating or planting, whatever you choose to do with their garlic is fine with them. Mincing the cloves, I have noticed a milder note, more mellow garlic aroma. The darkly handsome male vampire from SyFy's "Being Human" might be able to sit next to me and ogle the blood coursing in my veins while I ate a bowl of pasta without developing hives.


Swiss chard 'Primo Rossa' and Cabbage 'Wakefield' stretching for the light.


Beautiful tomato 'Siberian' supposedly produced 52 days from transplanting.


Sweet red peppers 'Carmen' with onions growing behind.


Ornamental millet 'Jester' on left, Italian flat-leaved parsley and cayenne pepper. These seeds from Jung's had amazing germination (90% to 100%) compared with 50% I got on the sweet red 'Carmen'.


A 'Savoy' style cabbage with leeks growing behind. In the foreground, celery 'Tango' and the bare soil, seed planted on 3/21 for Dinosaur Kale. Tango had a very uneven germination. I have already pricked out and potted on a couple dozen celery which had developed their third leaves before these guys were hardly more than germinated.

Gardening in March for me consists of planning growing my garden. A couple years ago, I had my then 14-year old son help me build two light racks. I have a room I had originally planned as my upstairs bathroom when I bumped out a dormer and made the attic into a master bedroom loft. Budget issues have continued to leave this room unfinished. Vacant space too often becomes storage, especially in a home as small as mine without a garage or basement. My house is a scant 900 square feet, with my loft. I've managed to get a lot into a tiny space; I have a dishwasher, washer, dryer, fireplace, a 8' by 6' bathroom, a dining room where ten can sit down for pasta. The light racks fit beautifully into this space and almost make it worth the absence of a second floor bathroom.

The light racks hold 18 10" by 20" plant trays. I could pimp them up to hold an additional 10 plant trays, if needed. Right now, I have lots of little plants screaming for a cell-pack they can call their own. I have one position in one of the racks with a tray on my heating mat. I have found using a heating mat cuts my germination time by half. After about 90 percent of the seeds have germinated I move onto the next batch of seed I need to germinate.

Last night, I chipped four o'clock seeds and soaked them along with the colored cauliflower seed from Botanical Interests. Those will be planted today. I also have some Savoy style cabbage to prick out. I could start some coleus, and begonia cuttings. I have seeds started for a lot of things, cabbage, kale, onions, leeks, broccoli, that will go into the garden before last frost, which here is sometime around the third week in May.

I have found those kabob spears to work just perfectly to prick out and plant seedling. I think this step, after getting good germination, to be the most important in growing good strong transplants for the garden. To prick out, I prepare the next up size cell, going no bigger than 2" by 2". It is important that plants develop roots that fill the cells. I use the kabob stick to make a hole in the center of the cell and than draw down the root system of the seedling into the cell with the pointy end of my stick. I carefully press the soil around the seedling, fertilize if I so inclined and water. If the seedling is a difficult transplant I may cover the newly transplanted seedling with a clear dome to conserve transpiration. This is a great method for just a few seedlings planted in a mass planting like I did in a couple trays above.

If I am growing a lot of seedlings in a 256-cell-count tray, one seed to a cell, I may want to use a dibble to may the holes (or I have even seen these dibble racks that will make the holes a whole flat at a time. Simply pop out the cells, place a cell in the larger pots and press. seedling need to have good cohesion with soil to keep growing. Air pockets will air prune the roots. "Watering in" the seedlings helps get rid of air pockets.

Grand Calla Lilies: Spectacular!

Oh, by now we all know how Facebook is a bit like the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I share aunt-status of my nephews with a Guatemalan woman. This gets me quite a few Facebook posts every so often in Spanish. Luckily, not a problem, I spent many early mornings and mucho college tuition dinero on about 29 college credits in Spanish (which leaves me about 1 credit short of anything, which is typical for me), but I can read Spanish with almost 100% accuracy, and have to actively work at everything else.

This time, though, through a friend of a relative of this Guatemalan aunt of my nephews, there is this incredible ethereal picture of this mountain meadow just covered with callas!

This is definitely a share! I have never imagined they might grow seemingly wild anywhere. This photo was taken in Jalapa.

Think Spring everyone!

Spring in My Garden: Looking Back to Previous Years

Forsythia 'Northern Sun'



Native Hepatica

With temperatures in the fifties forecast for western Wisconsin, the accompanying forecast of winter storm watch for my friends in northern Wisconsin sound like a bad joke.

Almost as bad a joke a the Wisconsin lawmaker who is pushing the bill to require police officers to think about whether they have reason to believe the driver of a vehicle might not be here legally, a law similar to the one signed into law in Arizona this last year.

So the fine broadcast journalists on NPR are interviewing the writer of the bill, Don Pridemore, Republican from Hartford, Wisconsin. They ask him if this isn't profiling, especially toward Hispanics in Wisconsin. He replies that Wisconsin has almost as big a problem these days with Russians coming across our Canadian border. Canadian border? (To hear the broadcast from WPR.org, from 3/21/2011, 7:30 broadcast from Joy Cardin.)
Here I thought we only had to worry about the Yoopers! If my geography serves, Wisconsin can spit into Lake Superior at Superior, provided the DNR aren't looking and we can shake hands with the fine folk in Duluth, Minnesota, but that most of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan stretches across our northern border.

No northern cheeseheads I know are boasting, "We can see Canada from our back porches!"

So, with that winter storm warning, it seems appropriate to warn my good gardening friends and relatives, "Keep your eyes open. Those Russian mafia types are here to eat our cheese, drink our beer, and dig invasives from our gardens! There are just a few days of ice pack left on Lake Superior!"

Artist Marjorie Leggirt's Contributions to Horticulture

This picture of a flamboyant tulip petal is my connection to the artist of the salivation-worthy artwork featured on my post of a couple days ago.

I mentioned I bought some seed from a garden center. The seed company, Botanical Interests, had Marjorie Leggirt do the art for their seed packets. Botanical Interests' seed packets are chock-full of horticultural information; "dedicated," they say, " to inspiring and educating the gardener in you."

Leggirt's drawings of artichokes are beautiful-- frameable even. By reading the small print inside the packet, I also learn she is a scientific illustrator and instructor. She has illustrated more than 50 books and has seven permanent museum exhibits, and teaches botanical illustration and field sketching workshops throughout the United States.

She is based in Boulder, CO.

I live in Wisconsin.

So how does the tulip connect us? I first heard of the seed company Botanical Interests through a photography contest held by Fine Gardening Magazine. They were looking for the photo of the month for May 2009. I read about the contest the day before the deadline.

I thought for a moment. The picture had to be a May bloom/garden scene. But, I thought, more importantly it had to say "May" to the editorial staff of Fine Gardening magazine.

Heck! That tulip! What's not to like! I won unanimously.

I wish other things in my life were that easy.

As for the artichoke seeds, I chipped their hard seed coats with my kitchen shears. They are presently soaking in warm water. Later today, they will get planted and placed under my light set-up on the heating mat, where the instructions say they will germinate in 10-14 days. I hope to see them up in 7 days. Yes, I'm impatient. Chipping, soaking, and the heat mat usually get me something!

"Bing", Supermoon, and the First Day of Spring

This heuchera is Stormy Seas and always looks terrific right away.

My seedlings look pretty much the same this year, although I have a lot more of them.






I'm oblivious.

It's the first day of spring and I'm a gardener. Yet the First Day of Spring has just crept upon me and whispered, "Surprise..."

Not yelled? Nope. I thought it was tomorrow, for one thing. Isn't today March 20th? Didn't I learn in school the first day of spring was the 21st or 22nd of March?

The other thing-- I have a sinus infection. I always imagine a sinus infection is the way manic-depressives feel when on their meds...without the sinus pain, of course. I feel no real highs, sort of like a light volcanic rock being jumbled along the bottom of a stream bed by the current. I'm moving along, but no clue to where or why.

I boot up my laptop this morning, crawl onto the internet (that's another rant) and there's my home page, "Bing!"

I like Bing. I used to be a Yahooligan. Never a Google girl. Google is too plain for me. In truth, though, Yahoo is too busy. The homepage that comes with my ISP, must have given lessons to Yahoo. AND, I HATE my ISP. I did not search Bing out. Bing made itself my homepage in that ubiquitous way a lot of Bill Gates' software makes its way to my computer, when I load something else entirely so I can do something with my laptop that I want to do, generally something creative.

So Bing has this nice clean homepage with a different, incredible image courtesy of National Geographic everyday(I believe almost entirely.). Seeing the image each day is like jumping out of my mundane, everyday thing and taking a few second journey somewhere else entirely. I have started to see a pattern in their pictures, several days in a row the picture has a sense of movement, a path, a distant point of view angle, and then an explosion of color, followed by quiet zen-like simplicity.

Today is a zen day. It's a chickadee on a Eastern Wahoo branch.

Bing also has these hidden boxes to tempt you into the wormhole of the universe that is the internet. Today I clicked on one about "if Spring had a theme song, it would sound like this...". It took me out of my box to izune and the music of Noah and the Whale. Great Sunday morning coffee music, but not what I was expecting. I was expecting something vaguely Celtic/organic/new music/nature vibe with bird song thrown in. Not Noah and his Whale...

The other thing I like about Bing, it gives you four or five topics of what people are searching for "right now". Today, picture of the Supermoon. I'm not sure how they decide what people are looking for, but when I am subbing, the only thing I ever see kids searching for (other than the briefly required school work) are monster trucks, pimped-up cars or snow machines, prom dresses, and Justin Bieber. By the way, none of the guys even know who Justin Bieber is... Sorry Justin!

Bing makes me a better informed life form; sinus infection non-withstanding. I can wish you a Happy First Day of Spring (winter has been pretty ugly this year), tell you-- you really should check out Noah and the Whale on izunes, and that some of those pictures of the Supermoon are pretty incredible. Search for yourself.

For those people who garden, the pictures here were taken the first day of spring previous years. This morning, my dog told me she had to go out, regardless of how hard it is raining because she really is trying to be "Momma's Good Dog." It is what makes her the happiest dog in the world. The dog that has now gone back to bed and because she is a boxer always snores and sound like she is the one with the sinus infection.

Happy Spring!

Intoxicating Artwork on Seed Packets

I have oodles of tiny seeds that have sprouted and are growing under lights. Tomatoes, celery, peppers, leeks, onions, cabbage, broccoli, kale, and coleus clippings all busy doing their photosynthesis thing.

But, I walked into a garden center selling seed. I thought I would just look...

Yeah, right!

Like I said, the artwork was intoxicating. They say you should never grocery shop when you're hungry. Seed shopping. These drawing on the seed packet put out by Botanical Interests are good enough to eat.

So what did I pick up?

A couple combo packs (more than one cultivar in the same packet): Artichoke 'Green Globe' and 'Purple of Romanga', Onion 'Ringmaster', Melon 'Charentais', Kale Italian Lacinato 'Nero Toscana'. I also picked up okra 'Red Burgundy', acorn squash, sweet red pepper 'Marconi', marigold 'Tangerine Gem', a dwarf sunflower 'Incredible', and the pumpkin 'Big Max'.

The kale is one I saw growing at Allen Gardens last fall. The marigold is a bushy, frothy one with a different growth habit than most marigold typically sold as transplants. The pumpkin 'Big Max' I thought would be incredible fun for my brother's now 1 1/2 year old sons who live where my garden will be.

Codling Moth and Apples, Insect Phenology

I want apples.

Think of this as my garden quest!

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r4300111.html

Bloom Day, Global Gardening, and What to Do in the Garden in March?

(The graph above showing degree days as of march 17, 2011, courtesy of http://www.soils.wisc.edu/uwex_agwx/thermal_models/tree.)

We are increasingly becoming global citizens in our outlook and the availability of information on gardening on the internet. Every so often I come across pictures of gardeners doing some exotic gardening task while I still have two feet of snow on the ground. My ex-husband, with whom, I am still chummy, confined that he saw an old mutual friend while out buying mulch to mulch the garden I left when I divorced him. "Would you believe I used 50 bags of mulch last year!"

I looked at him dumbly, "Huh?" I still have frozen ground, and plenty of snow, and had to chip the ice out of my co mingled plastics and glass, Wednesday.

This is the way of the world, I guess. He lives 180 miles to the south, surrounded by asphalt and concrete. Here in the Central Sands of Wisconsin, those Canadian Artic blasts just keep bringing it on! I wore my winter coat to school this morning. A fire burns in my fireplace. Someone searched this blog on "when in March to transplant berries..."

Transplant berries in in March?

I've been thinking of making the trek to the Community Library with the sole purpose of seeing how many more measureable snow days the village snow witch has forecast. (Yes, my village has a snow witch. AND she, accurately forecasts such stuff as the exact frost date and number of snowfalls each year.)

I pay attention. I must just not be paying the right people, obviously.

Where I garden, no one is doing any berry transplanting in March. One strawberry grower keeps his covered with straw, until I think it is May 1! I'm a little more adventurous than that and I probably have a better selected cultivar as well. (I think Honeoye are just the BEST June-bearing strawberries, by the way.)

A couple years ago, I came across the idea of plant phenology or degree days. It's how to get "right and tight" with your zone. It is the idea that certain insect and plant things happen after there have been x-number of accumulated degree days. It usually centers around the idea of the hours where the temps reach 50 degrees.

This website (from the University of Massachusetts) gives a good explanation: http://www.umassgreeninfo.org/fact_sheets/ipmtools/gdd_phrenology.html

"Monitoring: Growing Degree Days and Plant Phenology
Timing
The growing use of less persistent, more environmentally benign pesticides, increased use of alternative management strategies and the rising costs of labor have all magnified the importance of accurate timing in pest management. Effective plant protection and efficient time management are dependent on our ability to predict pest activity. There are several ways to predict when pests are vulnerable to treatment or when monitoring for pest activity should begin. The calendar, calculation of growing degree days (GDD), and correlation of pest deveopment with plant phenology are the three most commonly used methods for insects and mites.

Calendar
The calendar method is based on following the historical record and past experience and is expressed as an approximate date. For example, gypsy moth egg hatch occurs in Massachusetts somewhere between late April and late May. As each spring in New England is unique and the season progresses differently in different areas, scheduling treatments by the calendar method alone can result in poor control, wasting both material and labor time.

Growing Degree Days (GDD)
Insects are cold-blooded animals whose activity and development is controlled by the temperature of the surrounding environment. It has long been recognized that growth could be measured indirectly by tracking temperature over time once the lower (baseline) and upper threshold temperatures for a particular insect were known. This would enable predictions of events in an insect's life cycle during the season by measuring growth in terms of temperature over time. While the concept of GDD has been around for many years, the baseline threshold temperatures are known for only a relatively few insect species. Currently, 50°F is used as a standard baseline for all insect and mite pests of woody plants. This standard was chosen because plant growth in the northeast is thought to start between 45° F and 55°F. Obviously, the farther an insect or mite's true baseline is from 50°, the less accurate these range numbers are. However, in most cases, the GDD method is proving to be much more accurate than the calendar method.

EXAMPLE:
average daily temperature - baseline temperature = growing degree days gained. (Negative numbers are ignored as growth does not go backwards.) If the high temperature for April 1 was 70°and the low was 60° then the average temperature for April 1 was 65° F.

70° + 60°

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2
= 65°

When a baseline temperature of 50° is used, the accumulation for April 1 is 15 growing degree days.

(GDD): 65 - 50 = 15 GDD.

As each day's GDD are added to the total, a growth unit calendar for the season is created. Gypsy moth egg hatch is known to occur between 90 and 100 GDD. By the calendar, this can be anywhere from late April to late May, a range of some 30 days. In contrast, if growing degree days are closely observed as they approach 90, egg hatch can be predicted within a few days.

The daily average temperature is readily available from weather stations or newspapers, or is easy to record using a high-low thermometer, thermograph, or a Biophenometer.

Approximate GDD Scale for Massachusetts

March, April, May, June July August, September October

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000


Plant Phenology
Plant growth also responds to accumulating heat units to some degree. Bud swell, leaf emergence, flowering, fruiting, and other growth stages can be correlated to the growth stages of some insects and mites. Continuing with the example of gypsy moth egg hatch, this is said to occur about the time Amelanchier (shadbush) is in bloom. However, as day length and other environmental factors can affect specific events in a plants life cycle and different cultivars frequently have different bloom periods, these correlations are less precise than using GDD, but more accurate than using calendar dates. As landscapers and nursery workers can easily observe bloom and other plant events as they perform their normal routines, this is an attractive method for basing monitoring and management. Plant phenology and GDD information relative to Massachusetts' plants and insects has been researched and are incorporated into fact sheets and newsletters. Weekly GDD accumulations and current plant bloom are available through the Landscape Message. As with relying on a calendar approach, caution should be exercised when using GDD and phenology. Both are meant as an aid to monitoring, not as a substitute for visual confirmation. "

This website is based in Wisconsin.

This one lets you fill in your location info and will shoot out the current information for organic pest management, planting, and whatnot.

This last page by plugging in my location info and apple scab as the pest I wanted to work with, on the day I sprayed my dormant oil it showed I had already accumulated between 106 and 113 degree days. (I sprayed about 1 PM.) A lot of science here!

Spraying Apple Trees and the Organic Way

I have a gorgeous dwarf apple tree 'Honeycrisp'. The first year it bore fruit, it produced 44 perfect incredible apples. I did nothing but water it when the fruit grew heavy and the rain scarce.

I thought, "This is great! These new varieties really are pest and disease free!"

The next year-- ugh! Wormy, icky apples.

So I figured, okay. Organic controls. I read about the pests. Identified mine. And went about controlling this pest with red sticky balls. I planted garlic under my tree. I limbed it up a bit, less splash from the soil. I opened up the branching structure, better airflow. I studied the growth cycle of the icky coddling moth. I patrolled my tree for apples showing they had been infected, picking up any windfall, picking off any on the tree, trying to stymie the 40-day life cycle of the moth. I raked up the leaves and plastic bagged them along with any infected apple.

You are probably thinking, okay, she's going to have some beautiful apples, and some she will be able to use, but which will have some blemishing.

I really ended up with squat, zip, zilch, nada.

So I talked to UW-Extension agents. They pretty much told me to try all these things I had already done. Have I mentioned my grandfather was an orchardist in the 1960s? I know just a bit about growing apples. I could identify a couple dozen apples you have probably never seen, let alone eaten before I was 10. I just don't want to use arsenic, lead, and DDT to get beautiful apples.

To be completely honest, there is one organic method I have not tried. Bagging the "king" apple. in this one, you literally seal up the biggest apple, or king apple, in each cluster in a zip lock bag right on the tree, and pick off the other apples in the cluster. Does this sound crazy to anyone other than me?

So last year, I decided I'm going to spray. I thought dormant oil is the least toxic of my options. I read up how to do it and did it. No good. I decided I must have missed the first emergence of the coddling moth.

So, yesterday, with over a foot of snow still on the ground, I got out my sprayer to spray my apple tree with dormant oil. Did I mention I saw a mosquito yesterday? (I killed it; I figure it is worth 10,000 kills this time of year.) I didn't stop there. I sprayed everything in the rosacae family. See, the only other thought is that these coddling moths may have over-wintered on some other host plant. I want apples!

Some of you are thinking, dormant oil? That IS approved for organic use. Yes. I have read that, too.

So here is the kicker, the cautionary tale. I figured, timing is important, but also I need to be much more exacting on the ratio of dormant oil to water. Hunting a measuring device (I don't want to use my kitchen measures for dormant oil.) is always problematic. But, aha! I have one of those little plastic cup measures enclosed with liquid cough medicine. Yippee, a good, well-labeled easy to use measure, at my fingertips!

So I clean my sprayer. Measure out the water. Use my hand measure to add the dormant oil. I wade through a foot of snow and spray my trees. Even though there is a foot of snow, it got up to 50 degrees yesterday and is still above 40 degrees. I need to refill. I get the water and go to add the required measure of dormant oil, only to find the dormant oil has eaten through and dissolved the plastic measuring cup!

Dormant oil is an approved organic? It can dissolve plastics?

Transplants and Berries

One of the ideas in the garden this year is to develop perennial berry patches. My brother is actually going to build raised bed enclosures for blueberries, blackberries, and hazelnuts. The east side of the enclosures I figure will be an excellent place to grow spring peas and then later tie up the tomatoes and some Asian yard-long pole beans.

My brother is also going to build a number of raised beds. The raised beds are going to grow the salad bowl veggies and herbs. These beds are going to be the source of the very intensive garden and hopefully the only spots we will be intensively weeding as well.

My plan is to plant into thin black landscaping fabric tomatoes, zuchinni, squash, melons,and peppers. The garden is going to be laid out so that it can be cultivated with a tractor for the crops of which we will be growing significant amounts of potatoes, corn, cukes, carrots, and parsnips.

The perennial part of the garden is clustered on one side. There will be a Mount Royal plum, rhubarb, June-bearing and ever-bearing strawberry beds, July-bearing and fall-bearing raspberries, blackberies, hazelnuts, Northland and Blueray blueberries, Frontenac and Reliance grapes. I have a Lapin cherry, Honeycrisp apple, and Moorpark apricot in my own yard. My brother has a very old apple orchard he has been attempting to renovate. This is why I will not be spending a lot of time on the orchard part of our "Food Security Plan".

In the herb bed we will have chives, garlic chives, parsley, thyme, oregano, tarragon. I really like dill and the seed and vegetable producing Florence fennel. I already have chives to be moved into the garden, I have Italian flat-leaved parsley and Florence fennel starts growing in my grow light set up.

Transplants! I have Cayenne peppers and sweet red Carmen peppers. Tomatoes: Olpalka, Sweet 100, Super Beefsteak, Roma, Siberian, and Bloody Butcher. I really like Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and as they are an heirloom, I save seed each year. This year, I have not yet found my seed from last year, so I am a little worried I am not going to get those started this year.

I have spinach. I figure I could start them in the garden, but I can start haarvesting earlier if I have some starts. I also have the pointed Wakefield cabbage, Swiss Chard Primo Rossa. I will direct sow the Bright Lights variety. Also I have kale, savoy-type cabbages, Calabrese broccoli, and golden tomatillos.

Always Looking for Great Gardening Insights

I'm always on the look out for great gardening insights. This book listed on the Garden Rant's blog looks interesting. Jimmy Wiliams' "From Seed to Skillet" might very well be my next great garden read!

Check out this video about the book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m5A4BWRDMHGA9/ref=ent_fb_link

The Value of "Invasive" Plants

It may surprise you!

"Invasive Plants Can Create Positive Ecological Change

Credit: Tomás Carlo, Penn State
10 February 2011 -- A team of scientists has discovered that human-introduced, invasive species of plants can have positive ecological effects. Tomás Carlo, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, and Jason Gleditsch, a graduate student in the Department of Biology, have studied how invasive fruiting plants affect ecosystems and how those effects, contrary to prevailing ideas, sometimes can be beneficial to an ecological community. The team's research, which will be published in the journal Diversity and Distributions, is expected to affect the way environmental resource managers respond to ecosystem maintenance.

"Among conservation biologists, ecologists, and managers, the default approach is to try to eliminate and root out non-native, invasive shrubs -- anything that seems to change an ecosystem," Carlo said. "The fundamental goal is to return a natural area to its original, pristine state, with the native species occupying the dominant position in the community. But the problem is that most native communities already have been changed beyond recognition by humans, and many native species are now rare." Carlo explained that his team wanted to test whether certain well-established, invasive fruiting species have negative or positive effects on bird and fruiting-plant communities. "We wondered: Are we sometimes doing more harm than good when we eradicate plants that, despite being introduced recently, have formed positive relationships with native animals?"

To read the rest of the story please follow this link to the original posting website:

http://www.science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2011-news/Carlo2-2011

This is the science.

Really Pretty Coleus and that Spectacular Begonia 'Bonfire'

The plant with the orange bell-like flowers is begonia 'Bonfire'.



I attempted to keep several starts of my 2010 coleus so I could start cuttings for this year. I used rooting hormone, clipped them to about 1 1/2" to 2", cut off or clipped back half the leaf mass, and stuck them in dirt. They are pretty babies today and very colorful. They'll make great impact in my summer pots.

I always save a number of my nice looking plants every fall. One of the more surprising discoveries happened quite by accident in 2009. I saved one pot with the purple leaved Moses-in-the-boat. I try to grow things as dormant/dry as possible during the winter. The purple Mose can take quite a bit of abuse. I had planted a begonis 'Bonfire' in the same pot that spring. By the beginning of October, the begonia was starting to look pretty dead, so I cut it back to the level of the dirt in the pot. I probably watered the pot four times all winter.



See all those rose colored bumps! My begonia-- "IT'S ALIVE!"

By the beginning of March I fertilized the Moses and started watering it, hoping to get some cuttings rooted by May. A couple weeks go by and I realize the begonia is not dead, simply dormant! Here I thought it was one of the annual begonias, and turns out it is a hybrid between the fibrous and the tuberous varieties.

The root mass has now gone through three summers and two winters. Dormant, the root mass is probably eight inches by 6 inches. During the growing season, it completely filled my 14" pot.! Last year the foliage mass from half the size root was incredible. This year I am considering cutting the thing in half.