Just housekeeping

Seed-starting update, boring, pass on...

Today transplanted dozens of little brassica-type plants from the egg cartons into peat pots, which will hopefully hold them until it's time to plant.

Also put in seeds for: mizuna, radicchio, ground cherries, ornamental millet, and dahlias.

Also sorted out my ridiculously-large seed collection into categories: Probably Will Use This Year, Old Flower and Herb Seeds to Combine and Throw Onto a Bed and Maybe Something Will Come Up, Keep in the Freezer In Case I Want It Again, Give to the Seed Swaps (there are two coming up), and (can't believe I managed this) Discard.

It was a seedy kind of day.

Itching

I was very amused this morning to read articles in the Washington Post by the two Thursday garden columnists, Adrian Higgins and Barbara Damrosch, which start out respectively:

If you are itching to get into the garden on a mild winter’s day, you might want to grab a good pair of hand pruners and some sharp loppers and go in search of a shrub to prune.

and

If you’ve got the gardening itch and it’s too early to scratch it, try growing some microgreens.

I think we can agree that everyone is a little itchy, and possibly irritable and testy and skin-crawly and hot under the collar, and if it's not the flu it may be the gardening bug.  I tend to scratch the itch by getting some soilless mix under my fingernails and starting seeds.  Photos soon ETA: photo of some of my baby plants:

Here's the list of what I've started so far.

Greens for demo garden: kale (Lacinato, Lark's Tongue), mustard (Southern Giant Curled and Red Giant), Chinese cabbage, komatsuna, purple pak choi, broccoli raab, collards (Green Glaze), kohlrabi (green and purple), cabbage (Early Jersey Wakefield and Red Acre), and gai lan (Chinese broccoli).  I may be a little early on some of these, but it gets so hot so fast and a lot of them bolt, so better to get them planted early and offer temperature protection if needed.

Peppers (mostly for me): Fish (no luck with germination, but I have just acquired some new seeds), Antioch (an Armenian heirloom, mildly hot), Red Cheese, Sweet Banana, and Romeo (these are to go with Juliet tomatoes, yes I am geeky).  Also some yellow bells and Italian frying peppers that have not germinated.

Other: cardoons (also on second germination try and succeeding this time), sorrel (more old seed, dunno if it'll work but I do want more plants), parsley, celeriac.

I wish I had room for microgreens.  As it is Older Son is going to have to share his room with some seedlings on his visit home.

Some of the many things I need to do outside when we do have a mild day and I have time in it:

Pruning, yes, thank you Adrian.

Setting up the tunnel I got PVC pipe and fastened brackets onto a raised bed for several years ago and have never actually used.  I'm not going to grow anything in the bed, but I do need some outdoor space for hardening off seedlings, and after the demise of my "mini-greenhouse" thing with the shelves and the zippered cover that broke the first year, all I have is a small shelf on the deck and row cover, and that is not enough for the vast number of seedlings in pots that are soon going to be requiring space that currently does not exist.  Existential crisis!  Metaphysics!  Tunnel of intermediate size to the rescue!

Getting over to the community garden plot and making the soil ready for planting.  I can actually direct-seed some hardy things right away once I get that done.  Real soil under the fingernails!

Like the headlights of an oncoming train...

Which is the end of the sentence "I see spring in the distance..."  Oh, it's a joy to have little plants bursting out of seeds in the laundry room again, and to be planning what to grow, and to be talking to other people about all that, but... it comes at you fast, doesn't it?  Yikes.

On the other hand, it's sleeting on and off outside just now, so I am reminded that it's still February.

Hi there.  I haven't written anything here in a while.  This is for several reasons:

1) Still wrestling with some health issues: the thyroid problems not solved yet and the knee still hurting. But I do have more energy and I can walk, and I'm hoping I'll be able to manage the physical labor of gardening and you know, squatting and kneeling and so forth.  Or else ignominiously scooting about on my butt with my right leg stretched out straight.  Somehow I'll manage it.  At the demo garden I have minions MG interns to dictate various tasks to, but my new community garden plot will need lots of work and that is down to ME.

Here's what it looked like when I was last there in December, by the way:

(It is very, very difficult to take a good photo of an empty garden plot.  Photos will get more interesting as the season progresses.)

I need to get out there again to start getting beds ready for planting.  Whenever it warms up a little.

2) Every time I thought about posting the ghosts of a thousand worms held me back.  That's right; I killed my worms.  It was plain and simple neglect; and yeah, I was sick, but still. *guilt*  They did make some lovely compost for me before they succumbed; in fact, I thought they were doing great and were ready to come up to the next level of my worm bin, and then... somehow they didn't make the journey, and apparently all died from starvation, best I can tell.  And if I'd been looking at them every few days as I should have, that wouldn't have happened.

I'm going to start over in the spring.  But oh dear.  Alas poor worms.

3) Some winters I just don't want to think about gardening, okay?  Especially since I know how many projects I got behind on last summer and will probably not have time or energy to catch up on this year.

But I'm back and I will make an effort to post on a regular basis, here and at Grow It Eat It.  I haven't done a Garden Bloggers Bloom Day in a while; next month there will probably be lots of flowers.  Right now I just have frozen snowdrops, and inside this weird and spectacular amaryllis:

In the MG world, aside from blogging and plotting, I seem to have become someone who stands up in front of groups and talks.  I was asked to do the three-hour introduction to vegetable gardening for the new MG class (I interpreted that as "what do you have to know about vegetable gardening to be a MG" and it went pretty well, I think); last night I talked about container gardening in schools to local teachers; next month I'm doing a spring veggie gardening talk to a garden club; and in April, if I have enough people registered, I'm teaching Intensive Vegetable Gardening again at Montgomery College.  I like putting together the powerpoints and I'm getting better at making the words come out of my mouth coherently, so I'll probably be doing more of this as time goes on.

I'm behind on keeping records already, but next post I'll try to list seedlings already started, and maybe put up some baby pictures.

Train arriving soon...

As my whimsy takes me

Catch-up post!  I need to go out and do some things today to prepare for the hurricane we're having in a few days, whee, and otherwise my gardening (with a very sore right knee) has been focused on my New! Community! Garden! Plot! which I am, as you see, extremely excited about.  I will have pictures soon, not that they will be very illuminating; it's a 20x20 square of soil that I'm removing weeds from, not too many weeds luckily, as the person who had it before took good care of it until she couldn't because of ill health.  There are peas growing in it, and a few herbs, and I'm going to plant more herbs, once the hurricane is over.

I did go to Longwood Gardens, how ever long ago that was now, and found it lovely, with plenty to walk around and goggle at.  It is a splendid thing; though it was, on that day at least, not quite my splendid thing.  Perhaps it takes itself a little too seriously, and just doesn't have enough whimsy to it.  I'd really need to visit in several seasons to judge.  But I went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, VA, last summer, and (again, a judgment based on a one-time viewing) they do whimsy a touch better.  Stuff like this:

and this:

in the conservatory, which just didn't seem Longwood's style.  Although I do have to admit these aquatic plants at Longwood:

are whimsical just by their nature.  I had no idea such a thing existed.  They are several feet in diameter, those things.  Just... wow.

Anyway, I'm not knocking Longwood; I just wasn't in the mood for it precisely that day, but it is beautiful and worth many visits.  And better maintained than Lewis Ginter (this is entirely a budget matter, of course).


Unfortunately I did not take many photos because I just had my phone and its battery was running low because of the GPSing on the trip up, and I had to do more GPSing to reach my hotel, so despite managing to charge it in the cafe I didn't want to risk running it down again by photographing everything.  But there were fountains, and topiary, and color-perfect flower beds, and some experimental gardens by students (possibly the best part; I really loved those), and even a vegetable garden, kind of tucked away on the side, but at least they had one.  And the Eye of Water.  Okay, that was whimsical, in a scary sort of way, like Porky the Litter Eater at Cabin John Regional Park except entirely different.  Local reference point, sorry.

I missed Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day due to travel, but there are still a few things blooming at home.  The nasturtiums have come nicely into their own in the waning days of warmish weather:

and here is a toad lily, possibly the one I grew from seed, which would be Miyazaki, or else the other one.

I love toad lilies.  I need to have many more of them.

Everybody is saying hello again

(I've been listening to a lot of Nat King Cole lately.  And everybody else, on my new music machine aka iPhone.)

You may have noticed (or, painful as is it for me to say it, perhaps you didn't) that I haven't been posting a lot recently.  This is because I haven't been gardening a lot (gardening being the excuse for this blog), which in turn is because I've been fatigued, short-winded, tremory, heart-poundy, and not interested in food, which are all symptoms of hyperthyroidism, which I was diagnosed with in mid-September after months of weirdness and exhaustion.  (The hot summer had something to do with the lack of gardening too.  Sensitivity to heat is, of course, another symptom of hyperthyroidism.)  It's not dangerous when kept under control and with medication I am already feeling much better and I can write my name again without looking like I'm drunk.

So I have been back in the garden a bit (my own; I never stopped going to the demo garden though it wiped me out for the day when I did), but I have so much to catch up on, and a lot of the projects I planned for this year have just gone by the wayside.  There is always next year.  One thing that is happening right away is that my request for a community garden plot please anytime one's vacated has been rewarded, and as soon as I pay for it I can start clearing and planting (a place for all those herb plants I started for some reason! around the border I think).  Can't do much in the way of veggies this year, since it's very much fall, but in the spring I will have food crops in sunshine.  My home veggie garden was a shady mess this year.

Anyway, more on all that later.  For now, have some pictures of things I didn't grow.

Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco:

We were out there a few weeks ago to see our son who is doing an architectural internship, and, you know, make sure he had furniture and stuff like that.

Saturday was the big Harvest Festival at the Farm Park where Extension and the demo garden are, and the National Capital Dahlia Society folks were there as always (they have the garden beyond ours) selling bouquets, which I always get one of so I can stare at these amazing flowers for a few days.  Ladies and gentlemen, my dahlias:

They are even more impressive in person.  I should have provided something for scale.  Six to eight inches across, I'd say.  It was a very fun event as usual and I talked to so many people and gave away so many hot peppers and mouse melons and I was exhausted, but it's all worth it.

I'm not planning to do Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day this month, because I will be in New Hampshire on the 15th.  Unless my mother still has flowers and I get inspired.

I am, however, going to visit Longwood Gardens on the way.  Yay!

More soon, I promise.

Bloom Day September

Oh, dear, I haven't updated in a month, which means it's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day again.  I have nothing really extraordinary to share, but I did have fun trying out the camera on my new iPhone, so here are the results.

Sweet little nasturtium.  Actually, I should say bitter little nasturtium, but it belies its taste.

The developing flowers of the hardy begonia.

Beautyberry with sweet autumn clematis crawling over it.  This is right at the front of the yard.

So is this incredibly bright aster.

Goldenrod being all dramatic just behind the beautyberries.  I didn't have to plant this or anything, in fact I have to pull out huge amounts every year, but it's nice to keep some.

An adorable little caryopteris I planted last fall.

The developing flowers of Limelight hydrangea.  Last month, green, this month with a lot of pink added.

And finally, not a flower, but I love milkweed fluff (this is from one of my orange butterfly weed plants).  I remember discussing with a teenage boyfriend the idea of collecting the fluff and using it for insulation in jackets and vests.  Just makes me feel warmer looking at it.  And there will be more plants next year from those seeds.

Okay, not bad from the new phone.  I need to remember that I can turn it the other way. *g*

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day August

It's the 15th again, and the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post is up at May Dreams Gardens.  I'm posting both here and at Grow It Eat It today.  And here is some of what's blooming chez Smith this August.

I think this is Eupatorium serotinum, late-flowering thoroughwort, a rather aggressive native that's one of the best attractors of beneficial insects out there.  I'm letting it grow in small quantities for that reason, but I'll have to pull it out before it goes to seed.  It's about 4 feet tall.

Oregano is also good for attracting those small wasps and other useful insects.  Oh, also good for pasta sauce. *g*

Knockout rose 'Sunny' getting into the blooming act.  Ironically, I think I planted this in too much shade, but it's managing anyway.

I have a lot of sedums of various heights and flowering times in the bed by the road.  The fall bloomers are turning color now.

And another one.

The Limelight hydrangeas are blooming their early color (they'll get pinker later) on the northeast side of the house.  They're not quite as out of control as usual, thanks to the droughty summer, but the flowers are as huge as ever.

See?

If we get any more rain the branches will be on the ground, as they usually are this time of year.

Hardy begonia is starting to bloom too.  I have a lot of these now, thanks to a generous benefactor.  I intend to be a generous begonia benefactor myself in a couple of years.

And that's about it for August!  We do seem to have recovered from the drought now; very happy to have rain!