Central WI: Cold Zone

Rose 'Eureka' and Russian Sage

Not a black hole, but a white hole...

Someone, a mathematician and programmer, has put together an algorithm using census data to design an interactive map showing one dot for every resident of the United States.

So I guess what i should be saying that instead of central Wisconsin being a black hole, it's actually the white space between everyone else.

I have been thinking a lot about the plants I want to grow, and those I actually do grow. Especially when it has been so bone-chilling cold as it has been the last few days.

The thing is central Wisconsin is where the cold from the Artic sort of drips down into the lower 48 states. And as there are large bodies of water nearby, one doesn't have to travel to fair to jump a zone or more. The closest botanical gardens are in these areas. The result is I don;t have to travel too far to get huge cases of zone envy. Camera in hand, I have taken pictures of many of these, like the rose Eureka above that grows well in Olbrich Botanical Gardens just 90 miles south.

The other plants in this post also fall in that, "I can't quite grow that zone".

Eremurus - foxtail lilies

Lenten roses

Manchustripe maple

One of my neighbors has a snake bark maple closely related to this one. It has made its way through at least one winter, so this might be a possibility-- if I had room for one more tree. It has survived for the people over at the Paine Art Museum.

Japanese silver grass

I tried this one one year with several plants. None survived.

Oakleaf hydrangea

This is the more likely candidate for a place in my garden, maybe this will have to make the short wish list, if I come across it on sale.

I have started to notice I seem to have a micro-climate on one side of my house, between my house and the one neighbor I never talk with. There is a fence between us with good cause. This space is approximately 12 feet wide, 4 feet of it covered with a pea gravel path.

My son and I have lately talked of making this accessible through his room by exchanging a window for a French door to a landing and maybe a hot tub. I have often thought of adding a hot tub or outdoor Finish sauna to our landscape here. It is one of our more private spaces in the yard. Not a goal for early this year with the garden walk looming, surely, but it is an idea we often discuss.

Needless to say, this area in my yard is scheduled for change or perhaps evolution.

Clematis Planted for the July 2013 Garden Walk

Clematis texensis 'Diana'

In my small yard, I can either under-plant, combine, or plant up. Many of these clematis have been added to a trellis where a climbing rose also grows or where I already have a clematis which blooms in a different season. In this way I am able to layer the garden bringing a lot more bloom to my small space garden.

Clematis 'Alionushka'

Clematis alpina 'Blue Dancer'

Clematis 'Elsa Spath'

Clematis 'Etoile Rose'

Best Garden Advice - May Day

Apricot
'Moorpark', a self-fertile and very hardy variety for the north.
Edible pod peas, 'Sugar Snap' planted on April 19. Good germination!


Radishes 'French Breakfast,' also planted on April 19.


Celery 'Tango' under glass along with Swiss Chard 'Prima Rosso'


My parsley 'Italian Flat Leaf' that made it through the winter.


Kale 'Tosca lacinato' or "Dino Kale"


Hardneck garlic planted last fall, 'China Purple Robe'.

It is easy to get discouraged in the garden. Consider my blog of yesterday and finding the disheartening cause of a few more brown needles than I would like to see on my Austrian Black Pine (picture added). Last year I lost a beautifully -shaped 4' tall burning bush (euonymus compactus) from rabbit damage.

My mother confided that she stopped vegetable gardening after losing her squash crop to late blight one summer, literally overnight.

One of my favorite blogs is by Marie, "66 Square Feet". She lives in New York City and gardens on a rooftop terrace that is 66 square feet in size. That's half the area I covered yesterday with a porous, black landscape fabric to warm soil in which I intend to plant "a few" tomatoes, melons, and peppers!

She talks about foraging some beach plums last this coming summer from trees currently in bloom under the Brooklyn Bridge. Yesterday, I had an espalier session with my Lapin cherry, a variety which produces a sweet cherry similar to Bing (of grocery store fame) which is not hardy though here in Zone 4.

I then moved on to Margaret Roach's blog, A Way To Garden, another good one. It should be, she used to be Martha's head garden writer. She is decidedly a good gardener in her own right and has the space to do it, unlike myself. She is blogging about May garden chores on this May Day.

These two gardens bookend mine in size and mostly zone. One is written by Marie, a fairly observant gardener, but no where near the knowledge level I am guessing Roach may be hiding up her proverbial sleeve. In this way, they probably bookend me as well. Reading their blogs this morning, I did realize a couple things. One, gardening is a VERY local event. Two, everywhere on the internet we tend to use the words "varieties suited to your conditions," or "heat-tolerant varieties," or "cold tolerant varieties". That word "varieties" pops up again and again, without telling us the very important part! What is actually going to grow for us.

So, it has made me think very closely about how I will attempt to blog this growing season. I will make every attempt to include how a particular variety does for me here actually growing in the ground and containers in Zone 4.

I am hoping I can provide some tips, and good garden advice, and maybe come up with some things that you have not heard of that dramatically improve your gardening experience. These are times when all of us, good gardeners and wannabes alike need to excel at developing our self-sufficient gardening skills in uncertain economic times to not only feed our families, but connect us to the greening of our world.

Today's humour!

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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.