Plant Talk

The Luxury of Sweet Peas - and the Perfect Vase

This dismal spring has finally produced a gratifying abundance of sweet peas - and it's about time. We waited at least 2-3 weeks longer for sweet peas to flower, but turns out they liked that long, cool spring. I can't cut them fast enough, and have vases of them in every room of the house, so the whole place smells like I'm piping sweet pea fragrance in through the heat vents.

In the months between August and June when we're sweet pea deprived, I can never really remember how intoxicatingly heavenly a big bunch of freshly picked sweet peas look and smell - they're a luxury no money could ever buy - you really have to grow them yourself. 

And then find just the right vase for them - look at this glossy, ethereally pale cylinder of a vase made by Whidbey Island ceramist Inge Roberts (see more of her work at Museo Gallery's website). I love all of Inge's work, but this vase is perfect - white, but not dead white, glossy but not shiny, slim and tall enough to support and show off sweet peas as if Inge had them in mind when she made it.. Look closely to see the vertical seam on one side of the vase; on the other side is the subtle imprint of a hand - making the vase pretty enough to display on its own during that long, sad, sweet pea deprivation to come....

Big Excitement Over a Meager Harvest - Strawberries and Sweet Peas

Finally, finally, this morning I picked the first ripe strawberries and exquisitely fragrant sweet peas. I admit I have just three stems of sweet peas flowering, and a handful of truly red berries...but I can't remember every being so happy to pick a couple of flowers and berries. 

It seems like we've been waiting forever for our gardens to come along this year, but startlingly, after all the rain and cold, this harvest is only about two weeks late....the garden rarely yields up sweet peas or berries I before mid-June. I'd forgotten how profoundly delicious and satisfying a red-clear-through-the-middle strawberry is, let alone how wonderful a sweet pea smells.

As I fought my way through the slugs and snails to pick these treasures, I gave thanks for all the rain and enough sun to push flowers and berries to fruition. I wasn't sure it'd happen this year!

So - here's the proof, such as it is -

Everyday Bouquets - Sweet Peas

Last week's blast of heat may have fried the hydrangeas, but at least it brought on the sweet peas....most years they're in full and fragrant bloom by my birthday in mid-June. But after such a cold spring, it was last  Wednesday evening before I could pick my first real bouquet and the perfume filled the house....

Sweet peas' old-fashioned charm call for the simplest of vases, like this square, green glass pitcher. Arrange a big bunch loosely in your hand, sort the colors out so that the darker shades are distributed throughout the paler toned blossoms. Then snip a half inch or so off the stems with a pair of sharp shears , and plunk the whole bunch into a vase filled with cool water.  Fluff them up, and that's all there is to it with such satisfying flowers.

When you plant sweet peas in March, be sure and include a few bi-colors and some of the darkest shades to give dimension to your bouquets. I bought all my sweet peas this year from Renee's Garden Seeds....now they're in bloom I'm particularly loving deep, dark 'Zinfandel' and the creamy pale, supremely fragrant 'April in Paris'.

 

Sweet Peas

Sweet peas are the star benchmarks of the gardening year; planting them kicks off the gardening season for me, and picking my first bouquet of sweet peas means summer has arrived. It's time to order sweet pea seeds, especially if you're one of those good, thrifty gardeners who starts them indoors. I'm afraid I don't - the last couple of years I've had sweet peas in bloom from mid-June through mid-September by planting starts from the nursery (Wells-Medina in Bellevue and Swansons Nursery in Ballard carry a good assortment) and seeding directly into the soil around the starts for a second flush of bloom. The result is an array of colors over a very long season.

My tips for sweet peas are simple. Wait to plant until the soil dries out a bit,  usually by mid-March. Dig lots of manure into the soil - you can't overfeed these prolific bloomers. Sweet peas like a deep root run, and require regular watering, full sunshine, and a scaffold to climb. Sweet peas  earn the best real estate in my little garden with their abundance of fragrant, frilly flowers.

Renee's Garden Seeds offers an enticing array of sweet peas - I choose different kinds to grow each year, just making sure to choose a few dark purples for contrast with the pastels, and always the most fragrant varieties. I asked Renee Shepherd what she's excited about this year, and she reminded me that the supremely fragrant 'April in Paris' is her favorite. But she also recommends the new knee-high introduction 'Jack and Jill' and also 'Watermelon' for its "glowing color and perfume'.

Rose and soft blue 'Jack and Jill' grows only about three feet tall and are heat tolerant

The sweetly fragrant 'Watermelon' & my favorite dark purple, early-blooming 'Zinfandel'

'April in Paris' is quintessential sweet pea pretty and fragrant

August Update...

We have not much more than a month until the autumn equinox (Sept. 22 this year), and my garden is seriously flagging. Parts are overgrown, the broccolli and cilantro long since bolted; everything would have benefited from more trimming and editing than I've provided in this hot, dry summer.

But there are signs of hope - the raspberries are coming on deliciously, my dwarf blueberries and ever-bearing strawberries continue to produce. Apples and pumpkins are coloring up, a third sowing of lettuce is kicking in, hydrangeas are plumped up, and the agastache is luring hordes of feisty hummingbirds. Here's a selective look at what's happening out there on a mid-August afternoon:

A slug-riddled ligularia just coming into bloom next to a mop-head hydrangea- how come slugs are so huge and plentiful in such a droughty summer, anyway?

Pumpkins turning orange two months before Halloween...

Sweet peas persist alongside a mystery dahlia I found at a farmers' market here on Whidbey.

Echinacea 'Sunset' and orange hummingbird mint (Agastache aurantiaca 'Just Peachy')

I've bought artichokes to eat at farmers' markets, and left mine in the garden to develop purple fuzz. This is an Italian purple artichoke, growing here with Rudbeckia 'goldsturm'

Summer Bouquet

One of my favorite things about summer (since I'm a Seattle native and don't like heat, I look for other benefits....) is creating huge, English-style mixed bouquets from the garden. Nothing captures the essence of summer's bountiful garden like going outdoors early in the morning and clipping here and there (color, foliage, fragrance, large blooms, fluffy filler), then pulling it all together into an arrangement.

On the first weekend of every month, I have the pleasure of creating a bouquet for the art opening at Langley's Museo Gallery (July's show is the amazing Whidbey Island Glass Invitational, with pen and ink drawings by Seattle artist Joseph Pentheroudakis).

In winter, I have to break down and buy flowers, but this time of year even my little garden yields plenty - although in the bouquet shown below I admit the sunflowers are purchased. I needed a few big, bulky flowers to balance out the centerpiece delphinium, and couldn't bring myself to cut the lilies just coming into bloom.

The rest of the flowers - sweet peas for perfume, kale gone to flower, the plum-colored Clematis 'Polish Spirit', the first of the 'Annabelle' hydrangeas, the blue shrimp plant (Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens') and the silvery blue nettle in front (Eryngium 'Sapphire Blue') which I could hardly cut  because it was bristling with bees...speaking of, check out the black "bees" in the center of each delphinium flower....are all from my garden, cut on Saturday morning....(my editors at the Seattle Times would never let me get away with a sentence like the one above!!...the pleasure and perils of blogging...)

Summer Bounty II - Edibles (mostly)

In the spirit of slowing down and reveling in the longest days of summer, this week I'm posting photos from my Langley garden.  Mostly I'm staking up lilies and tying up climbing roses and clematis, for they've grown like crazy, encouraged by the recent rain and sun......I'm also busy harvesting broccoli, beets, pea pods, lettuces, herbs, sweet peas.....

Purple peas ( 'Blauschokker Purple Podded') which have pretty lavender flowers followed by showy pods. They  can be eaten early like snow peas, or left to mature... growing here with 'Westerland' roses.

My first-ever purple Italian artichoke, just starting to show fruit.

 

 

Summer Solstice Bounty

In the spirit of taking time to slow down, enjoy the garden, look closely and appreciate the season's bounty before it escapes us, this week I'm going to post a few photos of my favorite happenings in my Langley garden.....can't believe how productive and flowery this little space has grown in the four years it's been in the ground....

New to my garden this year is this weirdly pretty green coneflower (Rudbeckia occidentalis 'Green Wizard') growing here with edible pea pods.

As common and easy to grow as they are, no flower in my garden (except maybe sweet peas) pleases me more than cheerful nasturtiums. Combined with pumpkins and strawberries they tumble down the side of a galvanized feed trough. In the background are the burgundy, heart-shaped leaves of Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy'

Fragrant sweet peas, an assortment grown from Renee's Seeds

'New Heights' Delphiniums from Log House Plants....these dwarf English delphiniums don't require staking.... the tree in the background that looks like an olive is actually a weeping, willow-leafed ornamental pear tree (Pyrus salicifolia 'Pendula')

Spring Planting - Sweet Peas and Libertia

How better to welcome the first day of spring than by digging in the dirt? It took a good many hot tea breaks to brave the rain and wind (with a few sun breaks) but at least the temperature nudged up over 50 degrees here in Langley on Friday.

After digging in loads of well-composted manure, I planted an assortment of Spencer sweet peas starts, and seeded in uber-fragrant 'April in Paris' and the deep purple 'Zinfandel' to contrast with all the pastels. The starts should bloom by mid-June, followed by sweet peas grown from seed, which kick in later but bloom into September - if you pick every day or so. Doesn't it sound heavenly to pick sweet peas on a summer morning? Here's a photo of the babies, and a look at 'Zinfandel' in bloom (from Renee's Garden Seeds).

Then there are multi-colored little starts of leaf lettuce, that'll be the first thing ready to pick and eat out of the garden - I'm planting flats of them, ready to get out there and snip soft baby leaves in a few weeks.

I'm very excited about some new, striped  libertia - if you haven't grown these sword-like foliage perennials, you should check them out. Libertia look much like upright, wide-bladed ornamental grasses, they grow only a couple of feet high, and spread about politely into tidy clumps. Libertia's little, bright white flowers are followed by attractive sprays of seed pods which are great for flower arranging. New this year, to me anyway, is Libertia ixioides 'Taupo Blaze' which blazes in the winter garden with spiky foliage that changes from green to yellow/orange striped in burnt red. I'm also trying out Libertia 'Gold Finger' that has a more weeping form and yellow striped golden foliage. My rainy-day planting photo doesn't do justice to how showy libertia is once it forms a fat clump...but you get the idea....

Wildlife Wonder...Q & A on Hydrangeas & Sweet Peas

Last Friday, before the snowstorm blew in, I visited wildlife biologist Russell Link's Whidbey Island garden. I'm writing an "indispensables" column for Pacific Northwest magazine about his favorite plants, and I'd lucked out to walk around his multi-acre garden on a bright sunny morning. With his little terrier Cosmos fending off Bridget's (my wheaten terrier puppy) antics, we strolled past his freshly planted sweep of hedgerow, checked out masses of sword ferns, a golden garden, pond, rushing creek, and orchard. Native, orrnamental and edible plants co-mingle on his wildlife-friendly, bird-rich property. Snag trees, beloved by woodpeckers, hold pride of place. Look for drawings and descriptions of Link's ten indispensable plants, and why he wouldn't garden without them, coming up in May in Pacific Northwest mag...in the meantime you can get a dose of Link's compassionate and knowledgeable pragmitism on how to both attract animals to your garden and how to deal with troublesome creatures, in his two books from University Press: "Landscaping for Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest" and "LIving with Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest".

Below is a snag in Link's garden, well-populated by insects and woodpeckers.

QUESTION: When can I plant sweetpeas in the ground? I have a trellis for them to climb on.
Thanks,
Kathy

 

ANSWER: Here's the dilemma with sweet pea timing -  if the soil is too cold and wet you risk the seeds or plants rotting or damping off. But if you wait too long to plant, sweet peas won't have enough of the cool weather they need to get off to a vigorous start before warm weather sets in  - we can only hope!

The traditional time to plant edible and sweet peas is Washington's birthday - the 22nd of February - but it's so cold this year (It's supposed to get down to 22 degrees tonight in Seattle!!) it wouldn't hurt to wait a few more weeks. The last few springs have been so chilly I haven't put my sweet peas into the ground - seeds or starts - until mid-to-late March, and they've done just fine.

QUESTION: My sister always told me not to cut hydrangea's back after they finish booming, but to wait until the next spring so they will flower that year.  When can I do this and how far down are they cut back, as they look horrible now?  Thank you!

Sincerely,
Irene

ANSWER: How much you cut hydrangeas back depends on the kind, but let's assume you're talking about the common, old-fashioned mop-heads or Hydrangea macrophylla. (I say common not because they arne't fabulous and desirable, but because they're the kind you see most often). Anyway, your sister is right that leaving the old flower heads on the plants over the winter helps protect the new buds from cold damage.

The time to prune is soon - usually I'd say mid-March is ideal. But try to put up with their scraggly looks a little longer until we get through this spell of frigid weather. When it warms up a bit, cut the old flower heads off, being careful not to injure the fresh buds below them. On older plants, it's a good idea to cut a quarter or third of the old canes right down to the ground to open the plant up and keep it from getting too twiggy. To learn more about hydrangea pruning, and the best way to deal with types besides mop-heads, turn to the book by local pruning diva "Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning: What, When, and Where and How to Prune for a More Beautiful Garden" from Sasquatch Books.