joene's garden » Bulbs

Cut Daffodils Don’t Play Well with Other Flowers

joenesgarden — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:28:29 +0000

I love filling my living spaces with vases of fresh-cut daffodils. They cheer up the darkest mood and warm the chilliest room. But I learned that cut daffodils (narcissus is their botanical name) don't play well with other cut flowers in the same vase.

Cut daffodil stems exude a sap containing calcium oxalate crystals. These crystals prevent other flowers in the same vase from absorbing water, causing them to wilt. The same crystals can also irritate human skin leading to 'daffodil itch ' a contact dermatitis common among people who pick or work with the cheery spring bloomers.

I use two methods for picking daffodils. I either slice or snap the flower stalks near their base, then hold cut stems bloom down to keep the sap in the hollow stem. This works well when picking just a few daffs at a time. To gather a bunch of daffodil blossoms, I carry a small clean bucket or other non-breakable water-holding container to the garden. After cutting, each stem quickly goes into the clean water-filled bucket. Using this method, the flowers can rest in the water until I have time to arrange them in a vase of fresh water.

To keep these or any cut flowers fresh longer, replace day old water with fresh.

While daffodils are lovely when bunched alone in a vase, I like to add a touch of contrast. So rather than sentence another type of bloom to early death, I snip a few woody branches to accompany my daffodil bouquet. I love the contrast of the warm daffodil petals with the dark, but dainty, structure of birch or beech branches, such as in these photos from previous years.

A bouquet like this will cheer up even the gloomiest Gus.

Categories: Bulbs, Focus on Flowers.
Tags: cut flowers, daffodils.

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March 2012 Blooms in Connecticut

joenesgarden — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:00:00 +0000

What a glorious few days … warm temperatures, strong sunshine, and blooms popping out all over. Time for spring bulbs to shine if they can escape the creatures so active in my Connecticut gardens.

Voles have managed to find most of the crocus I've planted. I imagine them gorging on crocus bulbs till full then happily transporting any unconsumed bulbs for storage elsewhere along their tunnels. I'm sure they giggle at me under their vole breadth as they rearrange my crocus. I now have single bulbs blooming here and there in places I never intended them to be. So much for planting in groups! I once had a beautiful stand of crocus planted on either side of my front steps right where they were most noticeable from the front door. Used to, until the voles ate their share and rearranged the rest.

Last autumn – on the promise of vole-resistance - I purchased Tommies, Crocus tommasinianus. I don't yet know if they are truly vole-deterring or if my vole population declined because of no snow or the fox that found my front yard so appealing last summer, but the Tommies are blooming exactly where I planted them. These are 'Ruby Giant.'

For many of the previous years my Tete-a-Tetes, one of the earliest blooming narcissi, were visited by a hungry deer just as they began to poke their fresh green shoots out of the ground. I'm sure the deer, who are not supposed to like narcissi/daffodils, were just as anxious to see greenery as I. Nonetheless, when I found my emerging Tete-a-Tetes with their tops chomped off, I hoped they caused the four-hooved forager to have an upset tummy.

Here's what they looked like exactly one year ago.

This year, the garden idea fairy bonked me in the head with the old, rusty pitch fork remnants I have here and there. The head bonk worked. I came up with this method of protecting the Tete-a-Tetes and so far, so good.

These Tete-a-Tetes may be blooming in a pitch fork jail, but they are doing so with all leaves intact.

Today is Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, a celebration of shared blossoms from across the globe, a garden party hosted on the 15th of each month by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. You can visit there to see what's going on in Carol's garden and find links to all the garden bloggers who share their gardens with the world today. If you need a pick-me-up this is the place to find one.

Garden thoughtfully,

Joene

Categories: Bloom Day, Bulbs, Creatures, Gardening.
Tags: crocus, deer damage, Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, gardening in Connecticut, Tete-a-tetes, voles.

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A tad early for narcissi in Connecticut

joenesgarden — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:03:24 +0000

A quick stroll around my Connecticut gardens brought this surprize.

That's right … narcissi bulbs already poking their inquisitive heads out of the ground as if to say, «Is it time?»

My response when I first spotted them on January 2? A resounding, «NO!»

The calendar says January. We should have snow on the ground and be bundled up in front of a roaring fire.

But, outside of a couple of below-freezing days earlier this week it's been ridiculously warm. Today it's 50 degrees outside and there is no snow or winter-type cold in the forecast.

Obviously, bulbs don't follow the calendar. They follow a mysterious internal clock that signals when it's time to grow.

From their point of view they had snow (it came in October), they had some cold here and there, and now they're responding to a stretch of spring-like warmth.

Maybe I should listen to what their presence is suggesting. Maybe … though it's January … mild temperatures will continue. Maybe narcissi will be blooming in February.

I'm not ready to buy this. I still expect to get slammed with a nasty stretch of winter weather. Of course it will hit when all New Englanders have really let their winter guard down and lost their winter blood. That's just the way these things work.

So I did what any mother hen gardener would do.

I covered my early risers hoping a conifer blanket will hold the chill in the soil and slow the bulbs' growth.

Time will tell if this tactic works.

At the very least it makes me feel that I've done my best to fool the young whippersnappers back to sleep.

Categories: Bulbs, Gardening, Seasons.
Tags: gardening in Connecticut, narcissi.

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Re-GOOPs: a review of 2011’s gardening-oops

joenesgarden — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Welcome to January 1, 2012. The first of each month is confessional time. Time to fess up to a gardening blunder, or gardening oops. GOOPs for short. I share one of my gardening mis-steps and hope you'll do the same.

This is Re-GOOPs month, when I look back at some of the GOOPs from last year.

The GOOPs that drew the most comments is from June 2011. I described how the landscape fabric we installed, as directed by the block manufacturer, while building a retaining wall planting bed became blocked with fine soil silt. It hinders drainage to the point of making the bed virtually unplantable (new word?) during rainy springs/summers. Most of the comments to this post mentioned similar and other landscape fabric issues. I even had a manufacturer suggest we had installed the landscape fabric incorrectly …. we didn't.

To use the bed last season I dug out some of the soil so large clay pots would rest on the fabric layer. I filled the pots with new soil and planted them with hot peppers, cherry tomatoes and eggplant.

Trailing nasturtium seeds and coleus seedlings went into the remaining soil surrounding the sunken pots.

I promised, back in June, to report whether my scheme worked.

The hot peppers thrived, the tomatoes did okay, and the eggplant was not happy.

I planted bush and pole beans between a couple of pots at the far end but, with such a wet growing season, the soil remained too moist for the beans to really thrive.

The nasturtiums and coleus, however, had a banner year.

No aphids … not one.

The nasturtiums went wild, they never had a mid-summer slump, and the coleus grew mighty tall and bushy right up to first frost.

Eventually I plan to remove all the soil from this bed. I'm on the lookout for decorative planters that will fit the space and style of the surrounding block. The planters, which I'll fill seasonally, will sit in the raised bed on top of and within decorative stone. The stone will facilitate drainage and the planters will add seasonal interest and break up the visual impact of the long, narrow bed. I can also add other interesting accents – think cool rocks, shells, candles – at my whim. The new design is still germinating in my idea seed bank but, in the meantime, the sunken clay pots work as a temporary planting solution.

My GOOPs tale of voles eating crocus bulbs and deer nibbling on crocus and Tete-a-tete narcissi garnered a number of sympathetic comments. I think the photos of bright, cheery blooms followed by shots of stubby green leftovers helped in the sympathy department. Isn't this sad?

My solution for the narcissi is to cover newly emerging shoots with upside-down apple baskets each night and to keep a sharp eye out for marauding deer during daylight. For the crocus issue I've taken the advice from Nell Jean at Seedscatterer. I planted tommies (Crocus tommasinianus Ruby Giant and Barr's Purple).

I won't know till spring whether voles left the tommies alone. Keeping fingers crossed and praying to the bulb gods.

The last Re-GOOPs for today is Don't count your tomatoes … a gardening oops. It's another tale, and another sad photo, of creature damage. This time from those cute, fast-moving, devilish chipmunks.

They have superb ripe-tomato radar. The only way for me to beat them to the fruit was to pick before the tomatoes were totally ripe and let them finish ripening on a windowsill. So far the chipmunks haven't figured out how to get into my kitchen. Keeping fingers crossed and praying to the fox gods.

Looking back reminded … though I didn't really need it … that weather had a huge impact in 2011. Three GOOPs posts - February, March and November - involved snow and I hurricane/tropical storm Irene prevented a GOOPs post on September 1 (no power for seven days).

I suspect 2012's GOOPs will also involve weather and creatures and creatures and weather. At least that gives me the chance to blame something besides my own actions.

I hope you'll join the GOOPs party this year. If you are REALLY gardening then you must have made a GOOPs or two.

Either add your GOOPs tale in a comment below or post your GOOPs on your blog and leave a teaser in a comment below.

Happy New Year. Garden thoughtfully.

Categories: Bulbs, Edibles, Gardening, General, GOOPs-Gardening Oops.
Tags: Bulbs, creature damage, gardening in Connecticut, gardening oops - GOOPs, landscape fabric, tomatoes.

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Onion & garlic braids

joenesgarden — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:30:41 +0000

Do you think early New England settlers braided onions as a means to store them after harvest? I wondered this when faced with the trays of onion and garlic bulbs harvested a couple of days previously and set on a covered porch to dry.

I've braided bulbs before but had not planted and harvested quite the number of bulbs I have this year. So with bulbs and twine at hand, I positioned myself in a shady spot out of the hot sun.

Braiding onions should be a no-brainer for anyone who knows how to braid hair. However, my previous braids often unwound from the bottom unless secured with twine. A handy onion braiding guide recently published in Organic Gardening magazine's email newsletter explained how to start the braid so it will hold without twine at the lower end.

Before braiding, though, bulbs must be brushed free of clinging soil … a rather slow, tedious task that allowed my mind to wander back to the era of American settlers. I imagined what a colonial woman had to go through to prepare her garden plots. Gardening tasks fell to the women so my imagined colonist, Prudence, had to loosen her beds by hand, add manure from the family's animals, weed, watch, hope for ample rain and finally harvest the onions (from what I've read, early colonists did not grow garlic) that would help feed her family for the next year.

After harvesting she probably let them rest on the soil in the sun to dry and cure for a day or two. Prudence surely would have sought the cooling shade of a large tree to rest under while brushing her work-worn hands over each precious bulb to remove clumps of clingy soil. As she braided, Prudence probably monitored the nearby gardening or animal tending chores of some of her children. She may have had a daughter by her side to teach the youngster to braid.

I suspect Prudence enjoyed the brief set-a-spell rest she was able to enjoy, and that her braids looked much neater than mine. While braiding, her mind likely wandered to all of the other tasks she needed to complete that day - beans to pick and a stew to stir.

I saw Prudence briefly admiring her finished braids as she hung them on a dry interior wall of her small wood-frame home, then she scooted off to her next chore.

My braids, no doubt, are not nearly as attractive or proficiently done as Prudence's, but as I see them hanging in my modern kitchen with all its conveniences I have an overwhelming appreciation for the fortitude Prudence's people … my people … brought to this land.

Categories: Bulbs, Gardening, Harvests.
Tags: gardening in Connecticut, garlic braids, onion braids, Organic Gardening.

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