Ordering Perennials

 Besides being excited for seeds, I am counting the days until I can start planting out perennials in the garden.  I have some fun plans to spruce up all of my landscape plantings.  It will be a long time until nurseries have good looking stock, so I spend my time flipping through catalogs and surfing websites. I was going to hold off, I really was. Then my favorite online perennial store did this to me.

Link to the sale:  50/50 Friday Specials

Now I can whittle away at my wish list and save 50%!  That is significant.  Normal seasonal discounts rarely exceed 30% and even then the stock is limited.  The shipping will add up on a weekly basis, but Bluestone will combine it and adjust in the end.

Bluestone Perennials is an excellent grower.  They are right on top of their record keeping so they maximize your shipping and combine orders flawlessly.  They send you updates whenever there is a change in inventory.  They communicate very well.  And their plants and packing are awesome. 

My order arrived May 10th

If any of you are wondering what the reality of ordering seemingly expensive four inch live perennials through the mail looks like, here is one of my Bluestone orders from last year. This was a dozen of the Cheyenne Spirit Coneflower.   Now I know that they pack fifteen per box, so there is no sense in leaving empty spaces!

They included a free plant which was an Aquilegia Clementine Red

I planted the Aquilegia but set the coneflowers in a tray in the garden and cared for them for a few weeks. I planned to plant them in trios and I wanted to give them a chance to put out some buds so I could tell what color they were going to be and mix them accordingly.  And they took right off for me.

This pic was from an August 21st blog

It did not take long at all for them to bulk up and bloom.  It is hard to find any nicer plant than that in a nursery in August.  You would not think these were tiny mail order plants at this point.

And this is the free Aquilegia

These are the plants I have ordered so far

How Does a Seed Company Work?

 Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at a seed packing company?  Epic Gardening is a very popular YouTube channel which I do not follow, but YouTube knows what I like.  This recommendation popped up in my feed and it was really enjoyable.  This is a video tour of the Botanical Interests company.  

Botanical Interests is very reliable seed company that I use from time to time and they are known for their amazing seed packet artwork.  You may have noticed that if you mail order seeds, most companies do not bother to put pretty pictures on their mail order packets.  They may spend the money on point of sale packets that you pick out of the seed rack at your local store, but save the money by sending mail orders in plain white envelopes.  Not these folks.  They always send you seeds in packets and boxes covered in appealing artwork.  I even save the boxes when I get one.

This time of year I am thinking about seeds, dreaming about seeds, seeing seeds when I close my eyes... 

It Runs in the Family

 I've written before about my gardening roots.  I literally grew up in a greenhouse.  My parents owned a commercial retail nursery where they sold vegetables and bedding plants and started all of their own stock from seed or cuttings.  My grandfather also had a commercial greenhouse and even developed his own variety of tomatoes.  I remember these greenhouses very well, but oh to be able to go back now 20 years into my gardening career.

My PaPaw and I in Mom and Dad's geranium house. 
Dad background left.

My PaPaw taught high school shop and math, but he also farmed.  Afterall, there were 16 more hours in a day.  And PaPaw never did things by halves.  If he wanted to grow plants, he needed a greenhouse.  If he wanted an apple, he planted an orchard.  Then he needed a cider press.  And so on and so forth.

Hoeing Tobacco June 1973

Every time my Dad and I talk about our gardens, I find out some other little tidbit that proves that gardening skills are inheritable.  For instance, I did not remember my grandmother growing dahlias.  One day, a couple of years ago, my father wandered into my garden to find me pruning dahlias.  "Oh you're growing dahlias now.  Your MaMaw showed dahlias.  She belonged to the Dahlia Society."  I did not know that.  

Last fall, when I told him I was developing a knack for growing sweet potatoes "Dad sold sweet potato slips by the thousands.  One Cent a piece.  He had a forcing bed with heat flues running along it under the soil where he would force the slips."  I didn't remember that either.  My grandfather puttered in his greenhouse until he was 90, so I did get a chance to ask a lot of questions, but a lot of the commercial aspects of the farm had dwindled over the years.

A few weeks ago, after talking to my Dad again, and debating the different methods of storing tubers, it occurred to me that I actually have Ye Olde Family Greenhouse Album.  I wonder what I could learn from those pictures if I looked again.

Photography has changed a whole lot in fifty years.  Things were a lot different when you had a finite amount of film and you never knew what you had until you picked them up at the store.  But there it was, running westward from the house in front of the apple orchard.... maybe 75 feet of dahlias.  That's a lot more dahlias than I grow!  

The nice thing about computers is that you can scan a picture in and fiddle with the color.

Yep, them are dahlias

So where would the forcing bed have been?  Dad said it ran up the slope so that the heat would rise...

Here we go.  A whole cold frame system.  I wonder what else he had in there?

You wouldn't think a school teacher would have a whole lot of time to grow things in the spring.  I always thought that the greenhouse really hit its stride after he retired.  Here is the first greenhouse.  It predates the tomato hot house.  It was torn down and replaced before I was born.

If I had a greenhouse this size I could get ALL my vegetables in it.

Below the tomato hot house in the background as Dad and PaPaw move the greenhouse furnace out of the way so they can build the new greenhouse on the same site.

A bigger better greenhouse!  Twice the length and wider as well.

You can see from this picture the grade that would have made the heat rise through the flue in the cold frame.  The cold frame would have been on the far side of this new structure running half the length.

Below is how I remember the greenhouse.  This is the view from their back yard.  

1975

So that is where my gardening instincts come from.  Apparently, it was inevitable that I would grow dahlias and master sweet potatoes.  And, one thing that greatly interests my Dad, I am finally figuring out how to grow a decent cantaloupe.  In New York no less.  It requires some experimenting and some fussing, but my ancestors will not rest easy until we've figured it out.

Surviving Winter - Best YouTube Channels

 Here we are in the depths of winter.  The best we can do is plan and dream.  I am still over a month away from starting even my earliest seeds.  I have received all of my essential seed orders and am now just indulging in an occasional order to build my inventory and enjoy a tiny bit of retail therapy.  I am putting off buying new supplies just yet but I did go to the Dollar Tree and buy a dozen wire waste baskets which I use to shelter seedlings.  Up to now I have only used the short version which are fine for new transplants but this time I scored the tall ones which will be excellent for protecting larger plants and supporting row covers.  I even tried a little winter sowing with some leftover snapdragon seeds in a milk jug just for an excuse to put my hands in soil.  

This is my second winter of retirement and I am not having any trouble staying busy.  The weather has been mild but dismal and we are currently going through a bright but cold snap.  I am having to carefully monitor the temperature of my stored dahlias in the basement bulkhead, but it is worth it to see the sun again.  For the past week or so I have been working on updating our drapes.  I put an Audible book on, make myself a latte and putter slowly through through measuring, ironing, hemming and stitching.  I know just enough about sewing to frustrate myself and do it often enough that I believe (erroneously) that I will remember how to work the machine. Just when I work out all the kinks and get good at it again I come to the end of my project.  I am having to shorten the lined drapes from the top which is simple enough but the door treatment I created from scratch including hanging new hardware.

This is beautiful fabric which is nice to work with and I am very happy with how it turned out.  After taking down my old faded, unraveling calico attempts from almost twenty years ago I was determined that the finish on this panel would match that of the beautifully made panels that I got from the now defunct Country Curtains.  You can still get these drapes from Vermont Country Store who bought out the business from CC.   I purchased these exactly five years ago when CC was going out of business (at a 30% discount no less) and am just now getting around to hanging them.  Which is a shame because they do so much to update and brighten the room.  Next I need to freshen up the curtains on the living room side.  First I am going to try rehanging the existing panels by changing them from gathered rod pockets with a header and hold backs, to adding rings and letting them hang straight.  If that doesn't freshen them enough I will add lining and if it still doesn't help I have swatches on order.

Now enough about my drapes, and back to gardening.

When I don't have an active project, I could while away the hours watching documentaries on YouTube.  I pay for a subscription so I don't have to watch the ads and I get many, many hours a week of entertainment for less than 50 cents a day.  For starters, there is virtually unlimited music options.  I usually begin my day with a workout video. I could spend hours studying the socioeconomic affects of climate change in the year 536 A.D.  or the reason why the color blue was the last one to be named.  Each week I spend a little time in the world of Tolkien thanks to the many excellent channels devoted to in depth study of all of his works.  And if you just need a simple pick me up there is nothing better than watching funny animal videos.  Quirky cats and baby goats will brighten anyone's day and anyone who has trained horses can feel relieved that they never had a truly uncooperative horse.  

Of course my main interest is gardening.  So here are my Top Five YouTube Gardening Channels to get you through to spring.  The main reason I like all of these channels is that they are gardening (for the most part) in zone 5 or just on the edge, as I am, and they focus on outdoor gardening and vegetables, the things I am most interested in.  They also take a lot of time and effort to edit their videos making them very enjoyable to watch.

#1 Garden Answer:  Garden Answer is actually the number one English speaking garden channel on YouTube by number of views.  They garden in eastern Oregon in the high desert which has recently been reclassified from zone 5b to zone 6a.  This husband and wife team started YouTubing as a hobby because he wanted to edit videos and ten years later they have both quit their day jobs and also employ full time garden help and an excellent video editor.  They work their butts off and put a great deal of their YouTube proceeds back into making daily content which ranges from landscaping, planting an orchard, extensive vegetable gardening, a cut flower garden and seed starting just to name a few.  Sometimes the videos feature her families garden center so you can see behind the scenes of what it is like to run a large nursery and garden center.  I like to live vicariously through them and would never want to plant on the scale they do. Here is an example of one of their project videos which involves designing a formal English garden around their (very expensive) glass greenhouse. I found them first when looking for raised bed gardens similar to mine.  This channel is so popular because of the wide range of content and down to earth friendliness of the couple.  She is out there almost every day with her hands in the dirt getting things done.  I watch it daily because I don't want to miss some fun little project or tidbit of useful information. They also have a second channel where they answer viewer questions each week.

#2 Susan's in the Garden:  Susan's is a much smaller, low key channel.  She gardens in the Pacific Northwest Spokane Washington, zone 5b.  Susan has a raised bed garden much like mine and she has the same mindset towards pest protection as I do.  She has a good volume of content and also covers some perennial gardening and bird watching. She has put out a couple of excellent books The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook and recently The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook which is still in the preorder stage and will be released next week.  I get a lot of ideas from her for dealing with climate and pest challenges and I am really looking forward to this latest book.

#3 The Impatient Gardener: Erin gardens in zone 5b Southeastern Wisconsin within a (literal) stone's throw of Lake Michigan.  Once again, she has a raised bed vegetable garden almost exactly like mine and I've learned a lot about growing Dahlias from her.  She is also very good at testing and recommending tools. She still has a day job (at a sailing publication) but she has a very practical approach to both landscaping and vegetable gardening, puts out a lot of good content and takes a lot of time editing.

#4 Huw Richards: Huw gardens in England so a little milder climate then mine and he also likes to grow all the traditional, sustainable English root crops like Jerusalem Artichokes and various beets which aren't of a lot of interest to me.  But if you want to spend some time in a traditional English vegetable plot, his videography is excellent and can transport your mind to a beautiful place.  He posts about once a week and does well keeping content going in the off season. I first found Huw when I was studying up on growing potatoes in grow bags.   His overall gardening philosophies match mine very closely.  He practices no dig and waters with collected rainwater and has product lines that ship to the US and books.  Plus, he's just so darn cute.

#5 Gardener Scott:  Scott gardens in zone 5b in Colorado.  What I like about Gardener Scott is his scientific approach to growing conditions.  He has a lot of good, basic growing content and would be excellent for a beginner vegetable gardener to follow and get off on the right foot.  The content can be a little dry and rudimentary but every now and then I pick up a good tid bit.  It puts me in a good mind set for gardening.

Honorable Mention:  I follow these channels religiously, but they don't apply to my gardening as directly as the first five do.

    Gardening with Creekside is a landscaper, nursery and grower in zone 7 Dallas, NC.  Their channel focuses more on varieties that do well in the hot southern climate and vegetables are just an occasional side line.  They put up a video a day through the week and I skip the ones that focus on what they have to offer for sale at their nursery.  But I do enjoy seeing new varieties and some of her care tips translate very well to what I have going in the landscape.  What interest me most about their channel is the production end of things.  They start with plugs from Proven Winners, and grow them out to a saleable size.  They are increasing the production side of their business and recently purchased a machine that fills the containers automatically.  When they vacation they often visit other growers so you get to see some of the behind the scenes of what goes into getting annuals and perennials to your local retailer.

    Charles Dowding is another traditional English gardener without the modern charisma of Huw Richards.  Still he offers great insights to composting and no dig gardening.  He presents projects in a complete start to finish video as opposed to a daily Vlog update and does a lot of comparison experimentation to support his theories. He has decades of practical growing experience and if you can lower your blood pressure enough to follow along at the pace he talks, there is a lot of good information to be had.

So those are my top gardening resources that I visit daily to get my gardening fix.  Seeing what everyone else is doing in their gardens helps keep me on schedule without having to give it too much thought.  Now I have to get back to my drapery adjustments.

Looking Forward to Dahlias

 I've always like Dahlias.  It started with the little Figaro dahlias that are grown as annuals.  These grow quickly from seed but don't store real well (because they are small tubers) for the next season.  Thus it is easier to pick them up in six packs every year and start over.  When I began to think of Dahlias as a more long term investment, the natural choice was the dramatic dinner plate sized flowers.  I started with those back in 2018, just ordered a couple of mixed bags from various large scale flower catalogs.  I still have a few from that first, random selection, but, like a wine drinker, my tastes have evolved.

Noordwijks Glorie, Lady Darlene and Kelvin Floodlight

Over the past few years I've gotten better at caring for and storing Dahlias so I feel more confident in spending some money to develop my collection.  And while dahlia tubers can multiply out of control I have learned not to save everything just because I can.  I cull tubers quite cold heartedly to keep the number manageable both in storage and in replanting. 

I used to never bother to cut the blooms and bring them into the house.  I enjoyed them more outside in the landscape largely because I spend so much time out in the garden each day. Then I started cutting them before a change in the weather so the blooms wouldn't go to waste when I was not out in the garden as much and so large, wet blooms would not break down the plants.  Now I am learning to enjoy the cut flower goal, it has influenced my choice of varieties.

Kelvin Floodlight

Firstly, dinner plate sized flowers aren't easy to arrange.  They have, by necessity, much shorter, thicker stems.  And they tend to shoulder out the smaller flowers and overwhelm a bouquet.  They are still nice to bring in one at a time just to admire, but they don't play well with others.  For this reason I am more interested in the mid-sized blooms, as well as a wider variety of shapes and textures.  

Longfield Gardens example bouquet

Dahlias come in so many forms from tightly arranged ball shaped blooms to wide open blooms with a structure similar to water lilies.  Some are small with open centers.  Some are irregular or have rolled petals that look like a prickly cactus flower.  Growing a wide variety of bloom shapes and textures makes them more fun to arrange into a bouquet.  As well as more challenging.  I need to hone my flower arranging skills.

Gitt's Crazy

I also prefer varieties with blooms that have a lot of shading or which change in color as the bloom matures.  And I gravitate towards the bronze or copper color palette or the juxtaposition of pink with orange or yellow on the same petal.  With these things in mind, I am slowly revamping my dahlia collection.  These are some of the new varieties I have ordered for spring with those colors in mind.

Groovy, Mai Tai, Cornell Bronze
Crazy Legs, Iced Tea, Oh Honey

Additionally, I am replacing some colors with smaller blooms.  Instead of the giant Kelvin Floodlight I am trying a medium sized yellow called A-Peeling.  Last year I had a giant twelve inch white called Iceberg.  I saved the tuber but am trying a six inch white called Center Court.

A-Peeling and Center Court

Finally I am trying a few dramatic ones including a near black (which may turn out to be just dark red) called Lights Out.

Summer's End, Rawhide and Lights Out

Dahlia growers range from people who pick up a few tubers each spring at a big box store and grow them as annuals to people who cross them, save the seeds, name new varieties, and sell the extra tubers online.  I have seen storage setups from a box of unwashed tubers in the corner of a garage, to elaborate walls of shelving containing individually labeled tubers.  Even refrigerators to keep the right temperature and humidity for people without root cellars or unheated basements.  

There are people who struggle with soil conditions, diseases and support systems and people like me where they seem to be very little trouble at all.  I prepare my soil, and plant them carefully, then they require very little care other than deadheading until the day I begin to dig them up in the fall.  Last summer was the driest summer since I began gardening and I watered the dahlias a total of one time and that was only to finish emptying the water tank on the day we cleaned it.

If Dahlias are something you would like to try in your garden, keep in mind that they are addicting.  The Dahlia Growers Facebook page is full of very passionate people who plan their winter shopping around online sales which are announced ahead of time where popular varieties sell out in minutes.  Dahlias are an old favorite that are becoming newly popular with the thirtysomething crowd. They just have to have an example of all of the names they've seen online. I call it The Dahlia Wars. I think that takes some of the fun out of it.  Just buy a few and see how they do.  You can always buy new ones next year.

Keep it Simple Stupid

 Is anyone else battling garden fantasia?  This is the time of year when garden plans get out of hand.  I have two more companies to order seed from in order to prepare for my carefully thought out Plan.  However, I get ideas.  Now that I have decided to confine the vegetables to half of the garden, and plant pollinator friendly annuals in some of the remaining beds, I am fighting delusions of grandeur.

The Plan is to plant one bed in Zinnias, one bed in Sunflowers, and one bed in Dill and Parsley for the caterpillars.  Then I decided I would also plant one in Cosmos.  Simple.  All of those things are easy and low maintenance.  As long as I set it up properly and make sure these tall flowers are supported, I should be able to direct sow them, monitor moisture and forget about it.  Simple.

Then I start thinking that maybe I could add some special Nicotiana or Stock.  Or Calendula.  And maybe use up some leftover Snapdragon seeds.  And I keep having to tell myself - No.  No.  Nonono.  If I do that, I am going to start running into different germination requirements, and prestarting indoors.  And that will complicate my life.  And that is contrary to the goal of The Plan.  There would be a lot of variation in plant height and support requirements.  The finished look could be somewhat messy. Before you know it, simple sow and walk away resulting in tall, billowy masses of flowers will be out the window.

Floret Flowers

I did allow myself to over order on Dahlia tubers.  I had already planned to spend more time fussing over Dahlias.  I ordered a dozen new varieties of those so I can sort of cull through what I am overwintering and remove some varieties that aren't doing it for me anymore.  And I indulged in different Zinnia seeds.  In the past I have grown a lot of State Fair mix and lots and lots of short Profusion.  But honestly - the gold color that comes in State Fair mix, is one of my least favorite annual flowers ever,  And there are usually a lot of them.

State Fair Mix

This is the selection of varieties I chose for Zinnias.  They all come from Eden Brothers, and the seed packets are already here.  So I am done with zinnia ordering.  Probably. 

And rather than spend a small fortune on a dozen different Sunflower packets, which I have done before,  I chose a simple mix, also from Eden Brothers.

My main seed order always comes from Johnny's Select Seeds.  I have a $50 order sitting in my shopping cart which covers restock on veggie seeds, and the Dill and Parsley and Nasturtiums and Cosmos.  But they don't have my Seychelles pole beans in stock yet.  And I don't want to pay double shipping.  And Johnny's doesn't do backorders.  So either I have to wait until the projected date in January.  Or I could order the Seychelles from Botanical Interests and find some other thingsIdidn'tknowIneeded to fill out the order.  But- No,  Nonono.  Be patient.

Christmas is Right Around the Corner

Christmas is right around the corner and I am as ready as I will ever be.  Christmas gets more simple as you get older.  Or at least it has for us.  The house is decorated, the cookies are baked, the cards are sent, the goodies are bought and plans are made.  Over the years my decorating has wound way down.   I used to swath the entire house in big lighted garlands and trees.  I fully intended to put up one or two trees this year, but when it came down to it, the desire for all of that creative effort just wasn't there.  Especially because they take up so much room.

When I picture Christmas, it is dark, and quiet.  

There is the lustre of candlelight, soft music and wine.

I love to look at a decorated tree and squint, making the edges soften and blur.  

This year, although we do not have a traditional tree, we still ended up with a lot of little views to gaze peacefully upon.

This ^ is my Christmas tree.

It has brown (yes brown) and cream glass ornaments on it.

Its tucked away in the bedroom.

And I love it.

It holds a lifetime collection of the exquisite Reed and Barton gold and silver plate carousel horse ornaments.  And it rotates.  Like a carousel.  

Also in the bedroom

When I started compiling photos of all of my decorations this year, I realized that there was quite a lot after all.  Every room got a subtle touch of Christmas.

The bathroom shelf

I was going to say that when I used to decorate, I felt that I had to redecorate the whole house right down to the art on the walls and the towel.  Then I realized that I still do that.  Perhaps not as thoroughly as I once did.

Vintage Baker's Chocolate ads.

I admit that I left the greenery on the kitchen plate rack from last Christmas.

I did take down the orange slices and candles from July thru November.

Decorations do not have to look like a Hallmark commercial to bring out your holiday spirit.  Anyone who does not see squash, nuts, crows, and rosehips as a seasonal theme is too far removed from nature.

I used to use garland and wreaths on the breakfront pie safe.

Now I just rearrange to bring the choir boys front and center and add a couple of candles.

Some of my arrangements are repeats from years past.

But, if I can't create some new arrangement, my spirit fades.

Thus, the lighted Christmas tree forest that sits above my laptop.

Its important to greet any guests with a little holiday welcome.

This year I bought a bubble light candolier for my Hoosier and I'm getting a big kick out of it.  Its very retro.  It also reminds me of the days when our family Christmas decorating consisted of merely a tree, and one or two other little decorations like a nativity or a candleabra in the window and a table centerpiece.

The shelf over the living room sofa was the first place that inspiration struck this year.  I had found one of these Teleflora centerpiece sleighs at at thrift store years ago for $2.  While not a perfect replica, as far as cheap decorations go, these little sleighs are quite outstanding in realism and workmanship.  They look very much like an authentic, Albany style cutter.  I have used it each year as a candy dish.

Back in mid-November, we again visited the same thrift store, and there was a second one!  For $10 this time, but still cheaper than I can find online.  I snapped it up and immediately knew that I wanted to use them on this narrow shelf.  That left me with some creative thinking to do.  I knew I needed a flat background to cover up the summery wallpaper border so I sat in the midst of all my collections and thought about what I had that would work...  printer's tray?  muffin tin? serving plate?

Then my Currier and Ives prints above my computer caught my eye and I remembered that I had one last frame that my grandfather made.  I just needed the right seasonal print to go in it.  Currier and Ives published many lovely winter scenes and of course the ever popular sleighing scenes that we see so often, like the Road in Winter or Trotting Cracks on the Ice.  There are thousands of calendar prints available on line and these frames were made specifically for the calendar prints that were so popular up into the 1970s.  This year I chose the seldom seen Trotters on the Snow, but I can change this each year and give it a little update.  Plus, if I want to leave this frame as the centerpiece for the shelf I have nearly unlimited seasonal options to change out the picture.

So, that's how Christmas is going here.  We, like much of the country, are expecting a blizzard this weekend.  Tomorrow is supposed to start out rainy and windy, then drop to -2F by supper time and start to snow.  Wind could be as strong as 65 mph and between that and the ice, then heavy snow, power outages are expected.  Not exactly what people want to hear coming into a Christmas weekend.  We will be laying low.  The tractor is fueled, and we have plenty of food and of course, a whole house generator.  If worse comes to worst, we will hunker down and eat cheese all weekend.

Have Yourselves a Merry Little Christmas