Sprinter Snows

Out the door, it would be nice to eventually plant that planter...

 I am seriously going to have a conversation with the village Snow Witch.  I am seriously concerned about the vitality of plants when they spend an additional two months dormant.  The high today was 42 degrees, no sun.  For the most part, the mid-day snow melted by sunset.

Scene today down the street

My best view across the street

Nothing is growing, Nothing is budding.  After last summer's drought and extreme heat, this long dormancy might be especially bad for shrubs, trees, hay fields, dormant bulbs.  I'm not sure where this strange weather is taking us.  I think a very cool growing season. 

I hope not.

More of the Same, Sprinter Continues...

"Keep swimming!"  Is what this fish with its stern upper lip might be saying to those in the southeast corner of the county  or anywhere in the Midwest where streams and rivers are flooding their banks.  A decorative fish plate on my garden fence, hung using a plate holder.  It has held up very well and has been there ten years or more.

Each day it is more of the same, temperatures in the twenties at night, hovering between 34 and 42 during the day.  Usually no sunshine, very overcast, and either wind or rain, sometimes snow, too.  Sometimes, it is LOTS of rain.  Not a lot changes in the garden.  The birds are very loud, though.  They must carry on their procreative mating rituals, I suppose, in between building snow forts or igloos, or whatever they think they can build.

I have to say, since re-organizing my garden calendar to include the season of Sprinter to describe this weather, I feel a lot less anguish.  Gone is the need to get out into the garden.  Gardening just isn't done in Sprinter.  I think checking my calendar Sprinter generally continues until sometime mid-May.   I think then we are probably up for a couple weeks of a cold Spring, followed by a cool Summer starting sometime after the summer solstice.

I have likewise gathered Summer itself may be shortened up with our Killing Frost coming late August.   It is a tad disconcerting at best.

So as the Sprinter winds continue to blow, the boxer continues to hunker down by the furnace vent.  I continue my indoor gardening under lights, and get this... a gardener who is actually getting her house clean.

Rain = Indoor Garden Day

They are cleomes--I don't care what you "thought" they were...

There's a lot happening in the Indoor Garden Space during this busy Sprinter Season.  Many of the cuttings and seedlings are blooming.  (This always excites me no end as I do not have the very nice (read VERY expensive) halide light set-up my neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps, has in his underground grow room.) I have plants blooming under regular old florescent lights. I do check that the lights are rated minimally at 3,000 lumens.  (If you want to grow plants under lights do not think using the energy efficient 1560 or some such will do it for you!)

Linaria posing with tomatoes.

The coleus are all looking superb.  The local retailers around here charge an outrageous amount for wimpy little things so I am always careful to hold over some nice cuttings in the fall which I pot up and keep by my loft windows on a table salvaged from the dump strictly for this purpose.  (I painted it black and serves as a nice plant stand, but with its slightly uneven surface would have made for a terrible table.)



This has me excited.  My first seedlings from iochroma.  Armchair gardening in Winter, I came across iochroma grandiflora.  Anything with grandiflora as part of its Latin nomenclature stops me for minimally five seconds.  Reading that it also is a member of the nightshade family, which for me equals "easy to start from seed", hooked me.  Actually finding seed, though was limited to one seller on eBay or Amazon (I forget which.), unless I wanted to hand over much more money for a plant.  Also, unknown to many, tomatoes, nightshade, peppers, potatoes are actually perennials given a cooperative growing zone, with none of that biennial-ness that can make gardeners in central Wisconsin "&%CRA@#ZY" (like Jack-Nicholson-in-'The Shining'-crazy).

Blue salvia seedlings

 Working on that lime green and deep blue motive for my summer garden I started these blue salvia using the baggy method.  They were taped to my fridge, and had definitively decided which way down was.  I am currently messing with their tiny plant brains with them lying on a shelf under my light rack waiting for me to get in gear and prick them off the coffee filter and pot them on.  (Caution: Evil genius at work.)

Asian Spring Onions waiting for Spring

Eggplant, basil, parsley, cilantro, and green amaranth caudatus

 This Summer, the Master Gardeners are featuring my garden on their garden walk.  I seriously want to mess with these tourist gardeners with separate signs on the same plant in different spots in my potager labeling some cilantro as cilantro and others as coriander.  They are actually the same plant, but when speaking of the seed it's coriander.  You'd think that the seed fennel and the edible bulb variety fennel would rather have separate names versus all being lumped to gether with the other fennels some of which are merely decorative and do not produce the edible "bulb" part (which grows above ground like celery).  I don't even think there are any selected cultivars of cilantro!

Cinnie, the rain-depressed dog

Boxers, with all their facial wrinkles got the lock on SADD.  Rain, she does not like.  The gardener who first  said, "Take a picture, it lasts longer," must have been talking about central Wisconsin and sunny skies.

Checking the weather we have thunderstorm with a side helping of hail scheduled (no need to worry about foliage on trees and garden plants. Yay!).  Also, snow scheduled four of the next seven days and rain and overcast weather all but Saturday, on which day the Gardening Twins are celebrating their birthday (indoors).  Yay!

And, oh, the southeast part of the county is flooded out.

Sprinter Season

Ah, Sprinter!

That wonderful season here in central Wisconsin which can include spurious moments of snow sculpting (an excellent off season use of my gardening tools!)-- The Gardening Twins and I have been getting very good at carving out dragons from banks of snow pushed up in the yard after snowplowing.  In addition to snow carving, Sprinter also includes time for indoor gardening under lights.

I wish I had a picture of the truly nice scaly 15' dragon we carved last week.  Instead, oh frabjous joy! I have a picture of a teeny, tiny crocus!

This crocus is incredibly tiny, maybe 1/2" in diameter and the palest yellow.  Quite cute!

A little out of focus, but this is my hosta bed under my large white pine.  Those two spots of bright yellow are crocuses.  You can see I have a lot of clean-up from the ice storm.  The white at the top is my deep ditch level with snow.

Sprinter is also the time to observe garden heaving, always a joyous occasion!  Gardeners wishing to experience Sprinter heaving need to be sure to plant and transplant new plants in late Fall.

Sprinter winds bring dessication of evergreen plants like boxwood on foliage above the snow line.

Allium 'Summer Beauty' is a member of the allium family know for their use in Sprinter tonics and early Spring salads.

This established perennialized clump of tulips 'Ballade' is emerging.  This might be a phenological indicator that Sprinter may be coming to an end in a few weeks.  These tulips retain their red leave coloration throughout Sprinter.

Today, the temperatures hit 50, almost a normal high for Sprinter.  It is the latest day in 38 years to hit 50 degrees in central Wisconsin during Sprinter.

Sprinter always includes lots of flood warnings and wildlife living on the raised roads running through low-lying areas so be careful driving in these areas.  We are forecast for a couple inches of rain on Thursday, but do not despair fellow snow sculptors!  Many inches of plowable snow are forecast for Friday!