Overwintering Containers

I am notoriously lazy and also lack storage space, so I overwinter all my containers outdoors. We are in Southern Ontario (zone 5B), close to, but not exactly in, a snowbelt.

Every year I lose a couple of containers to breakage, but I can usually anticipate which ones those will be. My shallow bowls have lasted me three winters already. There is a chip out of one, but that's because a chair fell on it in a windstorm one summer. Sometimes I move the bowls next to the house for the winter, but I left them out this year and they were okay.

Shallow Bowl Planters, January 2006

The containers I lose are the orange terra cotta pots, which always flake and crack. They are not made for our climate, even the fancy IKEA ones that are supposedly frost-friendly. I also made the mistake of leaving a thin ceramic pot outside for the winter, and it cracked right in half.

IKEA Pot after Winter 2008

A few years ago, I had some light concrete troughs (something similar to hypertufa, maybe), and seeing how thick they were, you'd think they would last a long time. Unfortunately, the material was full of open spaces that let the water in and they simply fell apart after the second winter. I did manage to get two summers out of them, though.

Concrete Trough Planter, Summer 2004
(only lasted one winter)

The containers that work best for me -- the ones I don't need to empty or move for the winter -- are:

• cast iron urns (mine could use a coat of paint now after 4 years -- I'll probably spray them with some black Tremclad)


• large, 1" thick ceramic pots from the garden centre


• plastic containers (they are quite effective when grouped together, mixed in with ceramic containers -- I usually choose black or dark green, in at least a 12" size)


• my "stone-look" containers that are actually made of resin

Pansies in the Cast-Iron Urn, Spring 2008




Thick-Walled Ceramic Container, Spring 2007




Mixed Planters, Summer 2006
(white bowl was a freebie)




Stone-Look Planter with Echeveria*



* Although the planter easily survives the winter, I have to plant a new echeveria every year, since they are not winter-hardy.

With the larger, heavy ceramic containers and the urns, I only replace the top one-third to one-half of the soil every year. I dig out the spent soil and put it in the composter, then I top up with potting soil, plant my container plants and make sure they have the right fertilizer (I use those slow-release granules -- feed once and forget!). Depending on the kind of plants you grow, most roots don't draw that heavily from the deeper soil anyway, so I don't think it's necessary to change it every year.

Cast-Iron Urns, Summer 2006

Specifically regarding the shallow bowls, someone asked me if I replace the soil that gets blown away by the wind. Well, the short answer is no. That's because I don't lose soil to wind. These bowls are planted with tight-packed hens'n'chicks (sempervivum). Any remaining space I "mulch" with pea gravel.

Pea Gravel Mulch in Shallow Bowl Planter


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

It's a very nice look, and the gravel keeps the soil from being blown away. Also, even though the bowls are shallow, I still only half-fill them, so the sides of the bowl will also protect the soil from the wind. Sempervivum do not require a lot of soil to thrive, and if you group different ones together they make a nice show.

April Frost

Last night the temperature dipped down to -2°C, resulting in frost. It wasn't bad for the bulbs, or the pansies for that matter. They are hardy enough to withstand it.

The magnolia was a different story.



With the unseasonably warm weather over the past week or so, the magnolia bloomed more fully and quickly than usual. But its beautiful white flowers with a hint of pink are very susceptible to frost damage.



Some magnolia trees in our city escaped damage, particularly if they were well sheltered next to buildings. But our tree is in the middle of the lawn, and like all trees so placed, it suffered the ignominy of its flowers turning an orangey-brown that clashes badly with the lovely pink it usually sports.



At least we got to enjoy an unblemished magnolia for a few days.

On a different note, I've placed the Buddha head ornament in its usual location, where it will grace the garden for another year.


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

Busy Weekend in the Garden

Today was a busy day in the garden. We put the black mulch down, and did all sorts of tidying. Also planted some pansies in containers. (It's still a bit early for a good selection of perennials, but plenty of pansies everywhere.)

Pansies



This is the earliest we've ever put down mulch, I think. It seems like the black mulch has been really good for the garden. My husband said he thinks the black mulch helps things grow faster, and I told him it was more likely the warm front that was stalled over our area giving us many days of T-shirt weather in April, when it's usually much cooler.

Daffodils in Black Mulch



But he pointed out the difference in blooms of the same plants in the back yard where the plain wood mulch is, compared to the front where we put black mulch down last year. I'm still not convinced. The front is south-facing, with very little shade. Sure the back slope is south-facing too, but it gets much more shade from the fencing that surrounds it.

Magnolia in Full Blooming Glory



But in the end, it doesn't really matter, because we have such a beautiful garden to enjoy, with the magnolia blooming, all kinds of early tulips, clumps of daffodils, and the later perennials all starting to sprout.

Tulips, Daffodils, and Penstemon 'Husker Red'



Here is a close up photo of a beautiful double daffodil that is blooming near the front of the garden where I hardly see it, since I never walk down that way (except on purpose to check out what's blooming).

Double Daffodil



I leave you with one of my favourite pansies that we planted in the two tall urns in front of the garage. (By the way, I know that a south-facing cast-iron urn full of pansies will be lucky to last to the end of May, but I need to keep the pansies up out of the way of rabbits and squirrels, who find them delicious; also, I plan to replace the pansies with zonal geraniums at the end of May.)

Purple Pansy


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

Spring Fling

Well, the garden actually looks like spring has arrived now. Thanks to a steady supply of warm sunshine, the flowers are emerging and throwing out blooms as if their life depended on it. (Oh wait, it does.)

Here is one rather unexpected bloom: what should be a late tulip, flowering already.

Tulip, Possibly 'Ballade'



And here is its cousin, another one that just couldn't wait.

An Early Tulip



Now hyacinths you expect to be early bloomers. Mine are just coming into their full scented glory right now. (I should be honest here. I do not like strong scented flowers. But hyacinths don't last long and I am not outside all the time.)

White Hyacinth



Purple Hyacinth



The magnolia buds are starting to bloom. Two years ago we had a frost that damaged the flowers. Last year, the tree didn't bloom at all. This year, because the flowers are emerging so fast, they are small. That doesn't in any way affect their beauty though.

Magnolia Buds and Blossom



Closeup of a Blossom



And of course spring just wouldn't be spring without daffodils.

Daffodils In Bunches



Palmares Daffodil, Close Up


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

I'm not sure how long the warm weather will last, but the flowers have certainly had a strong start this year because of it. Eh, no complaints here.

Daffodils

I took at look at posts for the past couple of years, and it seems this year is sort of in between.

I guess spring 2007 was a little late, so I didn't have any daffodils on April 20th last year. (The first one opened on April 21st.) In 2006 at this time, the garden was blooming like crazy.

These Easter Bonnet daffodils have been blooming since yesterday. They're already starting to turn "pink" (the colour is really closer to apricot).

Easter Bonnet Daffodils



I had to enhance the contrast a bit to make the flowers stand out from the background. I normally don't like to do much editing (other than cropping) to my garden photos, because I want to represent things as accurately as possible. In this case, however, the flowers were lost without the added contrast.

These are the same two daffodils that have consistently bloomed first since I planted them in 2004. Here is another daffodil that has come back for a couple of years. I am not sure what variety this one is. (It could be 'Palmares', based on photos from 2006.)

Palmares Daffodil



Another bloom I have not seen since 2006 is magnolia buds. I am happy to say that the magnolia will bloom this year, after taking a rest last year.

Magnolia Buds


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

I am happy the show has finally started. Stay tuned for more as time goes on.

Spring!

We've been away on vacation for almost two weeks. (It was a lovely getaway to a tropical island.) The snow, though melting, was still quite deep when we left. But look what we have come back to! Crocuses blooming, and other spring bulbs sprouting foliage.


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

After the Snow Storm

Backyard with Snow (taken yesterday)



Same View in Spring (taken April 19, 2006)


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

We had a huge snowstorm this weekend. The first photo is our backyard as it looks right now. The second photo is what I'm waiting (desperately) for.

By the way, all this snow is completely out of character for the area I live. Yes, we get snow, but we usually get thaws in between snowstorms, so that by the time March rolls around there might be one last blast of winter, but it doesn't last and it feels more like the empty threat of a defeated champion than the promise of a strong contender.

This feels like winter still has more fight left. I hope that's not true and that warmer weather is on the way.

It will be a mushy spring, though, from the looks of things.

Because I Miss My Garden...

We are still having winter storms here. I really miss my garden.


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

Taken in May last year.

What's a Northern Gardener to Do?

Usually when I buy gardening magazines I stick to the Canadian variety -- of which there are two main ones: Gardening Life and Canadian Gardening. That's not from a patriotic standpoint, or even a financial one (although the publishing industry in this country is set up quite deliberately to favour local offerings).

No, it's not about that.

It's because all areas of Canada (except perhaps certain spots along the West Coast) are within northern climate zones. Because my zone 5b garden is in one of the warmer areas of the country, most of the suggestions shown in Canadian gardening magazines will work for me. (Of course, it would be a different story if I were trying to read about gardens that work in a true northern climate as Gardenista is. I have sensed disapproval on her blog towards gardening magazines because hardly any of them, Canadian magazines included, are useful if your climate is colder than zone 4.)

Cold hardiness is very important to Canadian gardeners, so describing the patch of land that I tend and nurture as a "zone 5b garden" is, to me, second nature. However, I have been asked by people in the UK to explain what a zone 5b garden is. Most areas of the UK are so favourable to growing flowers that you could probably become a fairly serious gardener without ever having to worry about such things. As shown on this map, even the coldest part of the UK, a small dot in Scotland, is two climate zones warmer than mine.

Camperdown Elm in Winter 2004


'Hoopsii' Spruce

Anyway, where this all began was... for the first time I have actually bought a gardening magazine, Taunton's Fine Gardening, that originates in the U.S. rather than Canada. At approximately 10 cents a page (including the advertisements), the magazine was only slightly cheaper -- though definitely more cat-friendly -- than the orchid I briefly considered buying. I am grateful to notice, however, on page 78, in an article talking about woody plants suitable to the Rocky Mountain zone in Denver, Colorado, that all four recommendations have been in my garden. Three still are: Camperdown Elm, 'Hoopsii' Spruce, and Paperbark Maple. Unfortunately, my Harry Lauder's Walking Stick (which I call Corkscrew Hazel) were taken by disease.

Former Corkscrew Hazel in Winter

So, in answer to my original question, "What's a northern gardener to do", well, dream and plan. Look at catalogs, books, and magazines.

Paperbark Maple -- A Recent Addition

Wait desperately for spring?

I leave you with the list of daylilies that I came up with for my garden from the Floral and Hardy catalog:

Chicago Jewel
Dragon's Eye
Japanese Brocade
Ivory Edges
Kallista
Metaphor
Real Purple Star
Royal Eventide
Siloam Dan Tau
Siloam Tommy Tucker

I also want 'Little Red Spring Song', even though it's an orangey-red colour. It's a very early one, and small, so I would love to have it in my garden. Oh, and check out 'Real Purple Star' -- it even gets the Martha seal of approval.

S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G

About a week or so ago, just before the Christmas rush, I received a catalog in the mail from Floral and Hardy Gardens, a place I think of as "the daylily farm" -- even though they also sell plenty of hosta and heuchera, along with a selection of other perennials, most notably my new favourite Postman's Pride sedum.

The catalog is printed on light purple paper (a good choice, I think) and the listings are in 5-point type (not the best choice, I might add -- though my eyes are still young enough, for now, to deal with it, I am thinking that a great big magnifying glass might be a good investment for the future).

I am happy to read above the Hosta listings that Betty and Marv and their staff have been "exceptionally vigilant about the Hosta Virus X problem" and that they even requested four inspections of the nursery over the summer and came up 'clean' every time.

Most hostas are in the $6-20 range, with a few $30 ones, and a very few more expensive than that, like Iris Frazier, described as a "lovely plant" costing $45, First Mate ($50), Sharp Dressed Man ($55), and a rare streaked version of Ginsu Knife -- called, appropriately enough, Streaked Ginsu Knife -- for $120.

But hostas are not really my thing, not in a big way anyway. I have a few, but my garden is not shady enough to appreciate too many of them.

No, it's the pages of daylily listings that beckon me, especially the word "NEW" that appears tantalizingly often.


Betty's Garden in Summer


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.


HOWEVER...

Those of you who have ever shopped for a brand new house or apartment will know what I mean when I say that it's not always a good idea to shop on paper. Square footage listed is always approximate, drawings are marked as "not to scale", and besides, there is no way you can judge the amount and quality of light in a home based on a 2D drawing.

So anyway, shopping for daylilies from a printed list, however descriptive it may be, is not usually the way I like to do it. Then again, the daylily blooming season is so short-lived, and January days are so grey and dull, that I will probably be spending a little time at the computer looking up images for listed daylilies to see if they catch my eye.

Betty warned me last August that if I don't want to be disappointed, I should get my order in as soon as possible, as most of her customers do their shopping between Christmas and New Year.

Well, I guess I should get started...

Winter Can Be Pretty

I don't spend much time in the backyard any more. But it's very pretty after a night of freezing fog, so I thought I'd take a photo through the upstairs window.


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

Hope you are all enjoying the last week of the year.

Why I Collect Daylilies

Daylilies weren't meant to be a collection of mine. It just happened.

First, let me go back.

At key points in my life I have bought (and kept) style magazines that have influenced me years later in ways I never would have guessed. I mean, how could they influence me? I put these magazines away, and never look at them except when we move, or just move things around.

Not long ago I found a magazine -- I believe it was a copy of House Beautiful from 1993 -- which had an article about an interior designer who decorated her small Parisian apartment with Murano glass. Close to the back of the same magazine was an article in the gardening section about hybridizing daylilies.

The first house we bought had a garden, but no daylilies. (It did, however, have poppies, something else I fell in love with from seeing them in a design magazine.) These pictures were taken in June 1997, when we had been in the house for almost five years.





Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

It was not until we moved into this house and the garden had been landscaped that I thought of daylilies. And even then I did not think of them as anything but just another plant. There was a sell-off of some pretty yellow ones, called 'Moonglow', so I bought a bunch and planted them in the front garden.

I chanced to be in touch with a woman from my past, an old teacher of mine but also at one time she and her husband were very good friends of my parents. They were moving into a new house and she said one of the big jobs she had was photographing, digging up and repotting, and then labelling all her daylilies so she could move them with her to the new house. It was she who first mentioned to me something about a daylily farm, as there was one near her where she had acquired most of her collection.

Still, it was more like an odd fact that I filed away at the back of my mind than anything I aspired to. Until a while later when I really started looking at daylilies in the nursery.

After that, being already a collector of other things (Art Glass, for one) I naturally slipped into character when visiting nurseries and garden centres. I had to buy a few daylilies every spring, along with the beautiful foliage plants hosta and heuchera. All these plants are in the hands of creative hybridizers, so there are constantly new varieties to be aware of.

In reality there are a limited number of shapes and colours of daylily flowers, and many of them bearing different names actually look alike. But as with any form of design, hybridizing is subject to trends. (The current pursuit in hosta hybridizing is for a red-leafed variety. One that I own, called 'Red October', is one step along the way. It has red stems and petioles supporting green leaves.)

In daylilies, one trend has been lavender eyes. I have benefitted from this trend and have a few of those results in my garden. Some hybridizers pursue unusual shapes. Others want ruffled picotees with huge multicolour eyes -- which to me is the daylily equivalent of big hair, or a velvet painting of Elvis, but it's all a matter of taste: those are some of the most expensive daylilies being sold. Usually they are not cold-hardy and will only survive in the South. (There might be some kind of message there, but I think Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd already had that duel, and each has survived with their fan base intact. Note that this is actually a clever pun, since many daylilies reproduce by increasing the number of fans, and having an intact fan base would be necessary to daylilies, also.) Northern hybridizers are of course pursuing daylilies with attractive features that will also survive harsh winters.

Even though daylilies are my main horticultural collection, I do collect other types of plants, too:

• hosta


• heuchera (common name 'coral bells')


• hardy geranium (the true geranium; what is most often called geranium is really pelargonium, or 'zonal geranium')


• poppies


• sempervivum (common name 'hens and chicks')


• echeveria

I only collect echeveria in summer because they are not hardy through the winter. Last year I tried overwintering some plants indoors, but that was not really successful, and besides, now that we have a cat no houseplants would have a chance of surviving.

It's All About Me(me)

Ewa, whose beautiful garden in Poland astounds me, has tagged me with a meme.

Being the cynical blogger that I am, I had long ago given up on memes. But because I love Ewa's garden, I will do most of this meme. Like the chain letters that were their ancestors, however, the meme stops here. I do not perpetuate it, beyond saying this:

If you are reading this post and you feel inclined to write eight random things about yourself on your blog, consider yourself tagged by me.

My Eight Random Things:

1. Jodi at bloomingwriter, who tagged Ewa, was recently featured on Blogger's Blogs of Note list, and I was green with envy. Luckily for gardeners, green is a good colour.





2. Because November-to-March is a very quiet time when the garden is often buried under snow, I need a winter hobby. Last year I took the time to study and improve my photography. This year I have taken up knitting.





3. Until a few months ago, I did all my blogging on a PC. I am now the proud owner of a beautiful iMac. This is like returning home after being away a long time. The very first computer I owned was an original MacPlus.





4. In spite of my aversion to gambling and alcohol, my very favourite city to go to on vacation is Las Vegas. Ten years ago, if anyone had told me that would be the case, I would have smiled sweetly in their face and told them they were crazy.
   
   
   
   
5. Maybe one of the reasons I like Las Vegas so much is because I am a huge fan of the television show CSI. We even bought a board game, with collectible figurines.
   
   
   
   
6. Right about now, I am wishing this was a shorter meme, like maybe five random things instead of eight. But anyway, I think I have mentioned briefly before that I used to collect Art Glass. So therefore I never have a shortage of vases when I want an indoor display of flowers from my garden. (The only problem is, I worry about putting water in the vases in case they get ruined. So far I've been very careful, though, and that doesn't happen.)





7. I'm a bit of an appliance snob, and I like to have the best we can afford. We recently replaced our 17-year-old vacuum cleaner with a Dyson, and our washer and dryer with a set of LG Tromm series. We did not get the kind with the steam (because I'm not in the habit of dancing home from work and rushing out to party in the same dress) but the next model down, which has a moveable control panel -- handy when your upstairs laundry demands stacking appliances.
   
   
   
   
8. And finally...it has taken me all morning to write this meme, and I am glad to be finished now. I need to go and cuddle the cat for a while.
   
   
   Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.