Plant Talk

Raised Bed Cleanup Time, Plus a Northwest Flower and Garden Show Preview

Next Tuesday afternoon I'll be judging gardens at the Flower and Garden Show (which runs February 23- 27) for Pacific Horticulture magazine, along with co-horts Ray Larson and Keith Geller. I'll share what's happening on floor of the show at zero hour, when the gardens are all freshly finished and polished for judging. Check here on Tuesday afternoon for a few sneaked photos and a review of what's not-to-be-missed when the show opens Wednesday morning.

And I hope to see you at 2:30 on Wednesday, when Lucy Hardiman, Cole Burrell, Dick Turner and I talk about the "The Future of Gardening" - I promise it'll be a thoughtful discussion, and full of surprises.

Out in the garden, it's that moment when, after months of dormancy, everything is coming alive. In a few weeks it'll be time to prune roses and hydrangeas and plant sweet pea seeds (if the soil isn't too soggy....), Right now my garden calls loudly for clean up and mulching so the snouts of bulbs can push their way up unobstructed and I can actuallly see the encouraging new growth on perennials and shrubs. I found some fat, red, soul-stirring buds on my Itoh peonies last week, when the overnight temperatures were still plunging below freezing, and the ground frozen in the shadier areas of my garden.

Last week's sunshine lured me out to cut back the old lilies, raspberry canes and grasses (finally!) I was feeling good about what I'd accomplished, until I walked past my neighbor's rasied beds on my way into town for a cappuchino.... his are already perfectly tidy and dressed up in a lovely, fluffy layer of rich, dark mulch. That's how I want my raised beds to look......

So here's the reality in my garden, halfway through spring clean up.

And here's where I'm headed in the next week.....love the ready-to-pop, pure spring potential of these freshly mulched beds...

You can see my dog Bridget peeking over the top of the bed, hoping my neighbor Dan will come out and give her a biscuit....

Q&A: Feed Troughs, Ground Covers & Poppies

 Question: I noticed (from your photos) that you use horse watering tanks for vegetable growing. Please comment on their efficiency or point me to info on the subject. Was going to have wooden planters made but would like to know about the tanks as an alternative worth pursuing.
Thanks,  C. Gay McVey

Answer: My garden is mostly raised beds, including round feed troughs, each four feet in diameter. I love the look of the feed troughs (they also come in a slimmer, bullet shape). They must be the least expensive large planter possible, their metal sides heat soil up earlier in the spring, and if you drill enough holes in the bottom so that they drain freely it appears they're indestructible. To locate feed troughs, see www.polocenter.com/health/feeduswa.htm for a city-by-city list of feed and livestock stores in Washington state.

Here's a photo of the feed troughs just after they were installed, and the first year they were planted:

Question: I Need some advice on where to purchase ground cover and what you would recommend. This would be in-between steeping stones/pavers. Look forward to your advice.

Thank you,

Noel Ramos

Answer: What will work best depends on your taste in plants, your soil, sun/shade..You'll want groundcovers that can take some foot traffic. Buy enough to plant them close together so that they fill in quickly. Until then, weed and water regularly.  There's a bunch of tough groundcovers marketed as "Stepables" - check out the web page for ideas, and then shop one of our larger nurseries for a good selection.

Question: Dear Valerie,

My great-grandmother grew the full, tall, pink, bread-seed poppies back in the late 1800's.  The seed has been passed on through the generations.  Each year I hold my breath that I haven't killed off the line.  My late mother planted her seeds from the previous year around Washington's birthday in February.  I tried that but found if I planted them in the backyard they'd grow in the front yard (I suspect from seeds in my compost) .  Either one heck of a root system or they're taunting me.  I suspect the latter.  I just read a suggestion of planting in the Fall for zone 7 here in Seattle.  Would appreciate your advice on  1) storing the seed, 2) when to scatter, and 3) how do you handle mulch/wood chips?  I like to use mulch to control the weeds but, since the seeds grow so shallow I worry about smothering.  Could I mulch first and then scatter, or would they do better in plain soil.  Thank you so much for your great articles and any poppy advice you can offer.  Shelley Butchart

P.S.  Apparently marrying a man with the last name of "Butchart" does not make me a gardener.  It worked for the woman in Victoria, but for me, not so much.

Answer: Avoid the wood chips when it comes to poppies, and sow them directly into the soil. Either spring or fall is fine, but I'd wait until later than February. I sow poppy seeds in late March when the soil has warmed up a bit, and again in early October.

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.

Sun Drunk

A gardening friend asked if you could get drunk on the sun? It sure feels like it the last couple of days, when the temperatures soared to over 70 degrees. What a fine  excuse for a gardening marathon, the first hard-core stint of the year.

Here's my springtime sequence of tasks, which I try to do in order, but always get pulled off track , usually by a transplanting chore. With interruptions for nursery runs or writing down ideas and plans, here's the drill:

First I clean up, cut back, and do the early pruning, like roses, clematis, hydrangeas and evergreen ferns. I cut back woody heucheras to just a little stub, tidy up leaves, evergreen grasses, and this year, unfortunately, dug up a number of corpses of dead plants, like lorapetalum and hebes, lost in the big December freeze.

Next I work on the soil, adding more to raised beds with "shrinkage" over the winter, piling compost on all the beds, and scratching in a balanced, organic fertilizer around heavy feeders like hosta, clematis, hydrangeas, roses, sweet peas. Water thoroughly.

I check all the drip hoses in the raised beds, and replace or re-route soaker hoses if need be. This must be my least favorite chore of the year...

Now is the time to transplant anything that needs more space or a different situation. It's also time to divide overgrown or congested perennials, like crocosmia. I dug up all my strawberries this year, dividing up the mother plant, re-planting the more mature babies.

Plant! Seeds, starts, fresh baby perennials - over the last couple of days I've planted a trio of Helenium 'Mardi Gras' (above) a few 'Carmen' oriental poppies (below), rows of lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower. Artichokes, sedum, swathes of coppery little carexes..and I haven't gotten to containers, yet, or trimming out any of the beds, annuals or any warm-weather vegetables, but I'm trying to remember to leave space for sunflowers, nasturtiums, pumpkins, carrots, and beans....let alone dahlias!

Water, and add a top dressing of rich, dark well-composted manure mulch so the plants are well fed and the beds look tidy and fresh.....                                                                                          

 

Enjoy the look of bare soil between plants, because it won't last long....

Q & A- heirloom vegetables, feed trough containers

Question: Enjoy your columns very much - I noticed that you have some galvanized feeding troughs being used as large planters. I would like to know where you found them in Seattle.  Were they expensive?  And how do you like them?  How did you drill draining holes? 
 Thank you,
 Masayo

Answer: I love the feed troughs because the galvanized metal brings a glint to the garden, soil heats up faster raised up in metal, circle shapes look great in the garden, and they must be the least expensive option ever for such roomy containers. They come in several sizes  in round and bullet shapes, and you can find them at feed stores...I got mine at Cenex Skagit Farmer's Supply Store in Freeland, on Whidbey Island. The web page www.polocenter.com/health/feeduswa.htm has a list of all the feed stores in the state, by city. I'm sorry I can't remember the exact price, but I believe that the four foot round (the largest) costs about $80 (or anyway it did five years ago when I got mine). Just be sure and drill plenty of holes in the bottom for drainage;  we used landscape fabric inside the troughs to keep the soil from running out of the holes.

Question:   I just read your interesting article on smart nursery shopping, and I was wondering if you know of any local area nursery that sell heirloom vegetable starts?

Thanks – pray for sun!
Dave

Answer: Wouldn't a little sun and warmth lift our collective spirits? It has to warm up soon...doesn't it?

West Seattle Nursery carries heirloom vegetable starts and most nurseris have a good assortment of heirloom vegetable seeds. You'll no doubt find the best variety of heirloom starts at the Tilth Edible Plant Sale and the King Couny Master Gardener's Plant Sale, both held the weekend of May 2 & 3; see websites for hours, locations and details.

I learned in researching your question that even large nurseries like Swansons, Molbaks, Sky and Wells-Medina have little about vegetables on their websites and don't distinguish if they carry heirloom varieties. But that doesn't mean that they don't carry heirlooms.....it's certainly worth a nursery visit to find out....

It's Time To Plant Vegetables...well, some of them...

Spring is  a frustration of waiting followed by a frenzy of planting. And in this exceptionally chilly spring we're all wondering what to plant when. ...I haven't read Cliff Mass's weather blog so compulsively since the December snowstorms... I'm looking for warmer weather on the way, and there's little reassurance to be found.

Still, we need to get our crops into the ground...timing depends on where you live, how much sun your garden gets, and what kind of soil you have. You have to wait longer to plant in heavy wet soil; raised beds that drain more freely, especially if they're in the sun, can be planted weeks earlier.

We're coming up on the last frost date, which is usually about April 1, but depends on elevation, proximity of water, amount of sunlight in your individual garden.  Even though the forecast is for another week of rain and cool temperatures, now is the time to prepare beds for planting.  As soon as you can pick up a handful of soil, squeeze it, and not have water pour out, you can begin planting. I've already put leaf lettuce and peas in my raised beds.....maybe a little too early, but I couldn't help myself... 

Here are seven vegetables (and a few suggested varieties of each) most suited to early planting - go ahead and get them in the ground in the next  few weeks and you'll be on your way to harvest '09:

Beets: Bull's Blood, Golden, Chioggia
Onions: White Bunching, Walla Walla Sweet, Red Globe    
Peas: Sugar Snap, Sugar Sprint, Little Marvel
Radishes: Sparkler, Gourmet Blend, Champion
Carrots: Scarlet Nantes, Ingot, Little Finger
Lettuce: Red Sails, Gourmet Blend, Mesclun blends
Spinach: Tyee, Olympia

Chioggia Pink beets, photo courtesy of Thompson & Morgan

Michelle's garden

We all needed a little good news on a rainy first day of spring - what a spirit-lifter to  learn that Michelle Obama is digging up the White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden. Isn't it absolutely amazing to have an administration that actually listens to the American people?? We've been asking, and now she's digging....

And Michelle is not only planting the first White House veggie garden since Eleanor Roosevelt's WWII Victory Garden, she's doing it right.  Here are a few highlights that struck me as particularly savvy...and worthy of emulation:

-The White House project began with the connection between cooking and the garden, with vegetables (55 different kinds!) chosen from the chefs' wish list. No beets - the President doesn't like them, but plenty of cilantro, hot peppers and tomatillos because the family loves Mexican food. 
-The garden is all organic & planted on the South lawn (or what used to be the South lawn...) where passersby can enjoy watching the garden's progress.
-Greens are easy to grow and especially nutritious - the Obamas are planting spinach, chard, collards, and a variety of lettuces, including red romaine and green oak leaf.
-They've livened up the garden with a berry patch for dessert and bee hives for honey.
-The garden will be planted in raised beds, which helps drainage, makes harvesting SO much easier, and contains the abundance of vegetables attractively within their geometric shapes.

No, not the Obama's garden - just my little raised bed garden in Langley....

Q&A - Sweet Peas, Poppies, and Raised Bed Construction

No posts over the weekend because I spent both days at a yoga seminar taught by a rock star of the yoga world.  I've never seen anything like it - it was  Houston-based, Anusara yoga founder John Friend road show come to Seattle, with live music, chanting, and two hundred enthusiastic students.  John is a joyous, charismatic teacher who manages to make even eight hours of yoga fun and inspiring. But now my muscles are so sore about all I can do is sit at my desk and try to get caught up on a few questions from readers:

Q: Hello Valerie, 
I enjoyed your article in the Seattle Times this morning and am inspired to put in some sweet peas.  Here is my question.  Do you think they would climb and find support if I plant them at the base of a row of arborvitae?  They would have morning sun.
Sally

A: Dear Sally,
I urge you to find a more hospitable location for sweet peas, for they need more than morning sun as well as better scaffolding than a row of trees. The curly little climbing tendrils on sweet peas are surprisingly strong and persistent for how delicate they look, but you'd need to run a series of strings up into your trees to get the sweet peas to climb them. Sweet peas, however, need more water, sun and nutrition than they'd receive planted at the base of your trees. You'll be more successful growing sweet peas up a trellis, chain link fence, or even  a tall wigwam of lattice or bamboo stakes in the middle of a sunny garden bed. Maybe if you dug in plenty of compost and provided some trellising, you could convince a clematis to climb your arborvitae.

This photo is of 'Black Knight' sweet peas growing up a hog wire screen in my garden.

 Hello Valerie,
Now you've gone and done it! I was doing so well at limiting myself to one package of Renee's sweet pea seeds this year (Jewels of Albion), since I am also a person who always plants too many sweet peas. The suitable growing area in my yard is quite small, so this was a practical decision. But now I can hear the siren song of 'Zinfandel' calling me, though I'd never heard of Zinfandel before I read your column in Pacific NW today. So, as I've done in past years, I'll begin scheming once again for ways to squeeze more space for sweet peas into my little plot. My great-grandfather, of whom I was very fond, claimed sweet peas as his favorite flower. They reward me with rich sensual pleasure, and I feel closer to him at the same time. Thank you for writing about this incomparable flower. I grew Renee's "April in Paris" last year--you are in for a treat! And they bloomed until late October.
Ramona

Valerie:  Your article last week in the Times about poppies reminded me of last season when I noticed some color I had not seen before in a garden that gets little or no care situated behind some Asian Pear trees.  I walked over there and found this wonderful surprise.  These poppies seem to have minds of their own. Thanks for all of your articles.  They are light and good news in dark times.
Nancy

Q. Ms. Easton, 
I kept the article you wrote about your masonry planter boxes  at your Whidbey home. Did you install simple concrete footings under the blocks or just use crushed gravel?  Thanks for responding to  this email.  I love your yard and it is exactly what we want to do in our sunny south facing yard in Fremont.

Thanks, Kirk

A. Hi Kirk,
I'd already forgotten the construction details, but my husband reminds me we used  concrete footings to keep the cement blocks (the beds are built of CMU - 4 " thick concrete masonry units) from shifting over time. The beds are four years old, and have stayed straight and sturdy. We used a combination of these rectangular constructed beds, each four feet across,  and round galvanized feed troughs drilled with drainage holes.(See below)