Plant Talk

Q&A - Where to Start? New from Sunset and Taunton Press

Question: I've been on the waiting list for a P-Patch, and just got one - what do I do now? I'm a novice who wants to grow vegetables and herbs.

Thanks, Lorraine

Answer: Get thee to the Master Gardener and/or Tilth Plant Sales this weekend to buy healthy vegetable starts best suited for our climate. You'll learn so much just from browsing the sales and talking to the expert vendors. While you're at Tilth, check out their classes for beginning kitchen gardeners.

 Be sure and plant what you most want to eat - lettuces, parsley, basil, tomatoes, chives, and blueberries are all good candidates for easy to grow and most used in the kitchen. And don't get distracted by edibles that don't have much chance of ripening here, like melons and eggplant, however tempting.

Before planting, weed your patch thoroughly, and dig in plenty of manure-enriched compost, available in bags from just about any nursery, grocery or hardware store this time of year.

Check out Mixed Greens, one of my favorite blogs, which is all about growing food and cooking from the garden here in the Northwest. The current post has a tantalizing recipe for risotto with fresh spring greens. And just in time for the growing season, Taunton Press, publishers of Fine Gardening and former publishers of the late, lamented Kitchen Gardener magazines has just launched an online resource called VegetableGardener.com.

 Question: I am interested in learning landscape design and would like information on ornamental plants and shrubs and any other information you might recommend that relates to landscape design.  I live in Seattle, so if you could recommend a website or book pertaining to landscape maintenance/design for the Northwest I certainly would appreciate it.  Thank you.

Ted Zimbelman

Answer: Hi Ted - I think you get the award for asking the biggest question ever. Where to start? You can't go wrong with the latest edition of The Sunset Western Garden Book - be sure and pay attention to all the region-specific information in the front. Also, Sunset just launched an online "Plant Finder" which matches up plants to garden conditions and should be a great learning tool. You can put in criteria like climate zone, size, color, wildlife attracting, and the plant finder will come up with a customized plant list. And remember that we Seattle gardeners are lucky enough to have a horticultural library staffed by librarians who are gardeners themselves - the Miller Library has an amazing bounty of information, free and available to the public.

But my best advice is to get outdoors and work the soil, plant, and observe - there's no better way (coming from someone who would much rather read about most things than actually do them herself) to learn about gardening than to just do it, every day.

May Sarton Revisited

In the midst of this hectic spring season, I've turned again to May Sarton's journals. They remain, even upon countless re-readings, a miracle of dailiness. No one writes about small pleasures - flowers, animals, friends, the weather - in a such a non-trivial way. Sarton's heartfelt words  reveal so much more than the simple details of her writing and gardening life, and thus cast light on our own lives.

Here's a bit from Journal of a Solitude that gets to the heart of why gardening is so satisfying...an important thing to remember in this rushed-up season of chores...

"Machines do things very quickly and outside the natural rhythm of life, and we are indignant if a car doesn't start at the first try, " writes Sarton, "So the few things that we still do such as cooking, knitting, gardening, anything at all that cannot be hurried, have a very particular value"...... And she wrote that in 1973, in a pre-computer world, let alone twitter, tweets, and blogging.

If you're new to May Sarton, (who considered herself a poet first and novelist second, even though her journals are what's endured)  I'd recommend starting with Plant Dreaming Deep. And if you're an animal lover, no book better captures a cat's nature than The Fur Person.

In the midst of spring gardening fever, a May Sarton fix is especially welcome, for she was a realist who tempered her garden passion with wisdom like "A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself..."

The painting of a young May Sarton by her friend, Polly Thayer Starr, is in the collection of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.

Cut Flowers

Where can you buy cut flowers at a reasonable price? Gardeners don't want those stiff arrangements, like the florist's special in cut glass vases stuck in styrofoam.  We want real flowers that look soft and natural, smell good if possible, and don't cost a week's grocery money. Until we can cut armloads from our own gardens, which doesn't usually happen until the lilacs bloom (this year, who knows, it's so cold the lilacs might bloom in June..) we need to buy our flower fix...but where?

Until you can gather a bouquet like this from your garden yet (this was cut in August from my Langley garden - note the still very green tomatoes!). In the meantime, check out Trader Joe's, which often stocks generous bunches of iris or lilies for a ridiculously low price. Buy a couple of bunches, stick into a tall vase, and you have a gorgeous arrangement. I never go for their mixed bouquets, which are usually an inharmonious mix of obvious colors....but you won't find fresh, big bunches of single types of flowers anywhere else for less.

From January through May, Metropolitan Market sells lovely fat tulips at $12 for three bunches, enough to fill a good-sized vase. Three bunches all the  same color makes an eye-catching, long-lasting display....I love the orange, but the deep purple and ivory are also showy.

Best Buds in Madison Park is a charming little flower shop, recommended to me by Ben Hammontree, who knows his flowers. Here's a short piece I wrote last year in the Seattle Times about this fabulous find of a place:

"Best Buds, on a quiet side street in Madison Park, is a European-style bucket market where you can pick a flower stem here or there from buckets arranged by color. “We don’t have pre-made or pre-done, and we don’t deliver,” says Lorentzen who has owned the shop with John Gallen and Babits Faires for a year-and-a-half. They are happy to help choose and wrap, and when they find a good deal at the flower market, they pass it on to their customers.

I pulled lilies, roses, snapdragons and freesia on a recent visit, Lorentzen threw in a few greens, and I ended up with a huge and fragrant extravagance for under $20.00. The shop spills out onto the sidewalk, wanders down alleys behind the shop, with potted plants and buckets of luscious flowers and greens. Branches of dogwood and edgeworthia, stems of cardoon and euphorbia, moss and unusual ferns – here are all the fixings for a unique, do-it-yourself bouquet.  (4111 East Blaine, Seattle, 206-709-3926)."

And there's a new fresh flower find with the very cool name of Marigold & Mint, which is both organic farm and flower arrangement and delivery service. The farm is in the Snoqualmie Valley, and they deliver to florists, individuals or businesses. M&M is owned and operated by landscape architect Katherine Anderson who posts a tantalizing list online of what's fresh every week, including edible flowers and flowering branches as well as a wide range of garden flowers like pansies, hellebores, hyacinths, cherry blossoms and allium. It's so tempting to think of having a fresh bouquet delivered every week, arranged in a vintage mason jar or galvanized bucket instead of a pseudo cut glass thing. If Marigold & Mint's flowers are as clever as their name, or as beautiful as their web site, we're in for quite a treat....

Q&A - Tomatoes, Miracle Gro & Hebes

Question: My girlfriend Maureen grows tomatoes on the west side of her house in
Shoreline, and she is highly successful.I tried to grow tomatoes on the south side of my house in the Haller Lake area of North Seattle, and I failed. 

When I asked Maureen what she did to get so many tomatoes, she said she fertilizes with Miracle Gro.  I am anti-chemicals and haven't used Miracle Gro, mostly because I resented them claiming years ago that the use of Miracle Gro was the reason the cabbages, etc., grown in Alaska's Matanuska Valley were so huge!  I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I know the reason for the huge produce is the 24-hour sunlight!

Anyway, I can't help thinking that we are eating chemicals when eating those tomatoes that have been heavily fertilized by Miracle Gro.  What do you think/know about this?

Thanks,

Nancy Boddy

Answer: Wally Prestbo ( a.k.a. Mr. Tomato), the guy who grows all the tomatoes for the Master Gardener Plant sale, uses a balanced organic fertilizer and two doses of Miracle Gro or another liquid feed during the season. He digs in 5-10-10 or 10-10-10 at planting time, then uses the liquid fertilizer on the first of June and the first of July.

I have a dear gardening friend who always preaches against turning your plants into chemical junkies....and I guess it sunk in with me. I don't use Miracle Gro on edibles or permanent plantings, only on greedy annuals in containers. I always use organic fertilizers on plants in the ground, in part because they contain trace elements that help build the health of the soil.  I'm not an expert tomato grower (Wally, and it sounds like your friend Maureen, certainly are) but I can't believe that with good soil, a warm, sunny location, and regular watering, we can't grow fine tomatoes with organic fertilizer (if the weather cooperates). Let's put this theory to the test this summer...if readers have a different opinion/experiences please comment below...

Question: I found your article about hebes in the Seattle Times on line while researching a replacement for hebes that were killed in December 2008 snowfall in Seattle.  My daughter lives in Seattle and lost all her hebes.  Do you have any information about what they might have done to save them? They were out of town the entire time the snow stayed on the ground for 5-6 days and could not cover them. Are  there hebe varieties that might be more resistant to snow? 

Thank you for your help,

Marlene Bihlmeyer

Answer: Everyone I know, including me, lost hebes last winter because of the severe cold. It seems like all the purple leafed hebes like the popular 'Amy' are goners. The way to grow hebes successfully is to plant them in free-draining soil in a sunny, sheltered spot - but I don't think even the perfect location could have saved the purple-leafed hebes in temperatures like we had last winter.

Most green leafed hebes seemed to have survived the deep freeze just fine. For a list of the hebes best suited for Seattle growing conditions, check out the web page for Great Plant Picks. You'll find climate zone information, descriptions and color photos for hebes that have been vetted for our climate, like the blue-green, fine-foliaged Hebe topiaria (left).

Thoughts of Tomatoes on a Sunny Morning

My editor at the Seattle Times tells me that my story on organic tomatoes in yesterday's Pacific Northwest magazine was the 5th most emailed story in the entire newspaper, proving that hope springs eternal when it comes to tomatoes. You can find the full story at seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2009076642_pacificfootgardener19.html

Museo Gallery garden art show - the final week

A reader asked to see some photos from Museo's garden art show, which runs through next Sunday, April 26. I'm sorry I don't have a photo of the piece I couldn't resist buying, which is a framed bird tile by Whidbey artist Meredith MacLeod, which can be hung outdoors.

Here's a photo from Meredith's web page of one of her birds. The piece I bought is - you'll be surprised by this! - a green glass tile with orange frame.

A few of my other favorite pieces in the show are a curvaceous metal pergola by Tim Leonard of Heavy Metal Works, a huge bird's nest woven from garden clippings, and the very cool wire garden cages by Carl Ulmschneider.

Really and Truly Dead

I'm still discovering, and being surprised by, which plants didn't survive the December deep freeze. Still in the wait-and-see category is Viburnum tinus 'Spring Bouquet' - sure, part of the shrub is alive and blooming, but most is so brown and wilted I'm afraid I'm going to have to chop it down to a nubbins. And how about all those brown carexes and pheasant grasses (Anemanthele lessoniana)? I don't remember them looking quite so sorry most springs....but I'm hopeful I'll see signs of life any day now. I'm holding off on yanking them....and I've cut out a good part of my prostrate rosemary, but the remaining skeleton seems to be holding on to its leaves and even blooming anemically.  

But I can't ignore the sad fact that my little hedges of Spanish, or rabbit's ear lavender (Lavender stoechas) are truly dead and have to go. These bi-color, early-blooming lavenders with their appealing rabbit-eared blossoms are my favorites, and I'll replace them, one more time anyway....

On a happier note, if you're in Langley or up for a jaunt to Whidbey Island tomorrow morning, I'm giving a talk about how to be an artist in your own garden, and answering questions about gardening, at Museo Gallery on First Street at 11:30 a.m. Join us to see the gallery's garden art show, meander across the street to the charming Chocolate Flower Farm shop (The Garden Shed), visit a couple of the island's great nurseries (Bayview Farm and Garden and Cultus Bay) and join in the celebration to welcome the whales to Langley, which includes a parade down First Street.

Here's a photo of Bridget in the garden, looking a little sad herself about the dead little lavender hedges edging the raised beds behind her - by this afternoon they'll be history...

 

Coming Back to the Garden

There are  drawbacks to living elsewhere than in your own garden half the time. I commute between Seattle and my Langley garden, and many days I so want to duck outdoors and pick a bouquet, check on what's budding, or pull a few weeds.

Arriving in Langley on a sunny Wednesday afternoon made up for many moments of garden deprivation.  When your garden is right outside your windows every day, it's easy for your senses to dull a bit...to lose track of spring's slow unfolding. But when you're away for more than a week, springtime hits you over the head with its magic.

When I last left Langley, it was like winter - cold and wet, the garden bleak and nearly dormant. What a difference a few warm days in April makes...it was a great joy to find drifts of bright daffodils, 'Princess Irene' tulips opening to the sun, and ruffled Crown Imperial fritillaria finally bursting into bloom when I arrived back in Langley this afternoon. The peas are growing, the lettuces plumping up nicely. Well, see for yourself - the daffodils are mostly the orange-cupped Narcissus 'Serola'; the tulips 'Princess Irene' surrounding a little trellis of 'Sugar Snap' peas in the feed trough. The bottom photo is of the peacock-like Crown Imperial frittilaria just opening its orange bells.

Q&A - Where to Buy?

Question:
Val:
 Read your article this AM and was interested in the NEPETA 'Blue Dragon' and PAEONIA "Kopper Kettle"...

A. Would they survive with an hour or two sun lite?

B. I live in Bellevue,WA...Where can I buy these plants?

ron allyne

Answer: Sorry, Ron, you're getting used as an example here of the many dozens of questions I've received in the last couple of weeks about where to buy plants....first, both peonies and nepeta need a sunny location. The classic book "The Complete Shade Gardener" by George Schenk is a wonderful guide to what you can grow in shade. Now to the "where to buy?" part of your question....

 Every Sunday this month and into May, my "Plant Life" column in the Sunday Times' Pacific Northwest magazine is on new plants for '09. Early April columns introduced a few choice trees & shrubs; the Easter column was on perennials, next Sunday is edibles, and the last column of the series is annuals. You can imagine how fun these are to write - I get to spend the month of February drooling over photos and descriptions of exciting new plants.

I hesitated to write the series again this year, however, because of the dozens and dozens of email I get from readers asking where to buy the plants mentioned.....which is like asking if Costco will carry a certain brand of olive oil, or Trader Joe's will have purple iris next time you're at their stores. Nursery stock changes all the time, different nurseries make various decisions on what to carry....all I know as I write the columns is that these are the plants being produced by big wholesalers this year. Which means nurseries can, and often do (nudged by these columns and your requests) order these plants. But many won't be in nurseries for awhile yet - it's been a cold spring... check back with nurseries mid-to-late May and even into June.

And when you ask me where you can buy these plants close to where you live, or where you can find them more cheaply, I don't know the answer any better than you do - I'd suggest calling around or using your search as an excuse to visit a variety of nurseries.There are worst task than cruising around nurseries in the springtime.

All the plants I write about are out there - you can Google any of the plant names to learn more and/or find mail order sources. Ask your favorite nursery to order them. And remember that the quest is half the fun.

The Most Magnificent Magnolia

Several years ago, Glenn Withey and Charles Price, the curators at the E.B. Dunn Gardens, asked me over for a visit. They served the most delicious chocolate cake, but even more memorable (which is saying quite a lot when it comes to me and chocolate) was the magnolia right outside their front door. I've never seen such a magnificent magnolia before or since, and I remember so clearly how it's pale, fragrant flowers on naked limbs stood out against the storm-cloud dark April sky. And this tree is huge - it has thousands of shell pink gossamer blossoms, each as big as a dinner plate, delicately cupped and centered with frilly, rosy stamen.

I often think of that most gorgeous of trees at this time of year when I first saw it in bloom, and recently thought to ask Glenn about it. He reports that Ed Dunn planted this Magnolia sargentiana 'Robusta' 45 years ago.  Since I, and probably you, didn't get to see the tree in full, lush bloom this year, Glenn and Charles have sent along some photos so vivid you can practically inhale the magnolia flower's fresh, lemony perfume.

The Dunn Garden is a joy and an education to visit because it has such mature specimens, grown to perfection over many years. The garden is open for tours now through July and again September through October;  email (info@dunngardens.org) or call (206-362-0933) for further information and reservations.