In her prologue, Pavord comments on the synergy between the acts of gardening and writing: “The writing fed the garden. And the garden certainly fed the writing.” Her chiasmus captures an intimacy I’ve often felt in my own life. After eight or more hours gardening, the day’s tasks often feel incomplete until I’ve taken a few minutes to record what seeds were planted, what vegetables were hoed, what tomatoes were harvested. I could never survive the exigencies of producing a weekly garden essay, but the pleasures of reliving a day of gardening in a private journal have proven immeasurable. ~Bob
2 January 2016. List of veggies (and their sources) that did well in 2015 at the Wickiup Garden. [Note: my quarter-acre vegetable garden is located on private farm land adjacent to the Wickiup Hill Learning Center–thus the name “Wickiup Garden.”]
Beets: Detroit Dark Red (Lake Valley)
Bush Beans: Cherokee Way Yellow (Burpee); Scrogdor 06 Yellow (Johnny’s); Blue Lake 274 (Botanical Interest)
Butternut Squash: Waltham OG (Johnny’s)
Cantaloupe: Sarah’s Choice F1 (Johnny’s)
Carrots: Tender Sweet (Springtown Grocery), Cordoba F1 OG pellets and Laguna F1 (Johnny’s)
Cucumbers: Tasty Jade F1 (Johnny’s)
Kale: Lacinato (Seed Savers)
Lettuce: Slobolt (Seed Savers), Red Sail and Black-seeded Simpson (Springtown)
Peas: Sugar Snap (Burpee’s)
Radishes: French Breakfast (Lake Valley)
Tomatoes: all eaten by deer–total crop failure
Swiss Chard: Rhubarb Heirloom (Burpee’s)
Zucchini: Dunja F1 OG (Johnny’s)
Bell Peppers, Eggplant, Parsley, Yukon Gold and Kennebec Potatoes, Sage, Banana Peppers (miscellaneous local sources)
5 Jan. Spent several hours at the Mahomet (Illinois) Library today, recording notes on Jan/Feb issue of Fine Gardening, a magazine I had not previously read. I was impressed. Felt like an old issue of Horticulture from 15years ago. Particularly enjoyed professional gardeners' recommendations for flowers in their geographical areas.
6 Jan. Another day going through seed catalogs, circling seeds that seem good candidates for the Wickiup Garden: Johnny’s Seeds, Burpee’s, Vermont Bean, Territorial Seeds, and J. Scheepers. Each catalog with unique strengths. I love the detailed, professional descriptions in Johnny’s–though their seeds are more expensive. Burpee’s has more emphasis on hybrids and disease resistance; their seeds are cheaper but catalog is less informative and discriminating. Vermont Bean has wonderfully diverse assortment of beans. JS catalog provides delightful information on germination habits (including number of years their seeds should remain viable), planting suggestions, favorite recipes–plus they have many varieties not available in other catalogues. I did make a new map of the Wickiup Garden. This weekend I’ll go out and try to correct any inaccuracies in memory. I need to decide where I want the garden’s east-west crosspath. I might add a couple of raised bed “squares” in the middle: give the design more variety and different kind of planting area.
12 Jan. This afternoon sorted through seed catalogs, trying to determine what tomato seeds to order–and from whom. I’ve been reading Craig LeHoullier’s “Epic” tomato book that K. gave me. Most of the tomato varieties discussed in the book are not available in the catalogues I’m using. One issue is whether to rely more on heirloom tomatoes. LeHoullier argues that heirlooms are certainly better tasting and do as well as hybrids in resisting wilt, diseases, etc. I’m not sure I’m convinced on their survival rate, particularly since I will be away from the garden for almost three weeks in June.
19 Jan. Visited Alum Garden today since I had to work in Library copy editing the MWCA Conference Program. Temp was about 10F; no wind so it wasn’t super cold but the SW gate lock was frozen. I couldn’t get my key inserted. I didn’t try the other two locks, assuming they were in the same state. Looking through gate, I thought everything appeared okay, but I wanted to make sure. I didn’t want to bother Security, so I placed a ladder between the shed and the garden fence and climbed over. As I suspected, everything was fine; just picked up small pieces of litter. The bad news was there had been too much snow and ice on the roof of the little greenhouse. The roof had collapsed, the tubing having cracked in the cold temperatures with the excess weight. Since the plastic sheeting is very stiff and brittle, I won’t do anything until it warms up. I need this storage space, but no funds for a more substantial greenhouse, at least for the next couple of years. I may try to construct a new skeleton out of PVC pipe.
25 Jan. Cloudy, temp in the mid 20sF. Began snowing in the afternoon, about 4:30. Very gentle, perhaps 1-2". Worked in garden studio [a small, heated garden office in our backyard at home] most of the day, recording information on seeds I’ve ordered, focusing on flower seeds from Prairie Moon nursery. I’m still uncertain how I want to sow these seeds. Despite some success last year, the seed planting process remains daunting. Last year, of course, I was just concentrating on the Alum Garden. This year I’m also trying to figure out the Wickiup Garden, landscaping at Buffalo Church, and improvements in my yard here at home. At least last winter I learned some things from germinating hundreds of seeds in the basement. And I still have two months before serious outdoor work begins. – Saw in email that Verlyn broke his ankle. I think he’s a few years older than I am. Today my left shoulder blade was stiff and painful. Must have slept on it “funny.” Another reminder of the tenuous nature of all this gardening work–everything dependent on me being able to keep up physically.
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[Here’s an excerpt from one of Pavord’s January essays, “By Heavens, When Do You Plant?”]
There is nothing more transitory than style. That is the point of it, that it moves on all the time. Clothes and pop stars are more at its mercy than gardens, though there have been some high-spirited attempts to subjugate gardening to the cause. The difficulty is that gardens (ones with plants in, anyway) won’t stay where they are put. This is a nightmare for stylists because their whole world depends on domination. The only way out is to get rid of anything that grows, and spread crushed car windscreen where the grass should be. Crushed car windscreen is the gravel of the nineties.
Transitoriness provides excitement and freshness in a garden. Sometimes it is a style thing, a craze for a certain colour, like the brilliant blue that is vogueish in gardens at the moment. There are styles in plants too. Hostas used to be stylish, but aren’t any more. Hellebores are certainly stylish. So are certain sorts of primroses. Daffodils have never yet made the leap. . . .
But underpinning these fleeting effects in a garden is a foundation of enormous strength and stability. The resilience and timelessness of gardens, the slow growth of trees, the immutable change of autumn into winter and winter into spring, the consequence that changes have on plants–no one can garden and remain unaware of these things. Indeed, they may provide reasons why we took to gardening in the first place.
Tapping into this underlying strength is none of the tings that makes gardening important to me. This, of course, is not a conscious feeling. When I wander out of the back door to do some causual weeding I do not say, “Fancy that. I am part of the great diurnal round.” I just get on with the job in hand. But while you are there, idly looking at the silhouette of the mahonia in the dusk and the sunsets round you, bleeding across the sky with the savage intensity that only happens on winter afternoons, you feel a whole lot better than you do inside. Colder, but better.
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1 Feb. Yesterday I began sowing seeds that will be outside in pots on the porch. Prepared 75 small pots in four trays, filling them with my planting mix from the shed: 1/3 top soil, 1/3 composted manure, 1/3 vermiculite. After filling the pots, I watered them and let them sit for a few hours. Then I started planting, mostly Prairie Moon wildflower seeds that require at least 30 days of cold weather. Finished two trays and moved them onto the unheated porch. Today I finished the other two trays. Pots include seeds for nodding onion allium, campanula harebell, dwarf larkspur, great meadow rue, bear grass, compass plant, liatris blazing star, pale corydalis, and pearly everlasting. [Note: only about half of these pots produced plants; one major error was that I followed the recommendation in a plant propagation book to mix small seeds with a small amount of sand prior to planting. Unfortunately, the sand in some pots created a kind of cement on top of the soil and smothered the seeds. This next winter I will repeat the cold weather planting but without the sand.]
3 Feb. Sitting in a motel room in Frederick, Maryland, thinking about what plants to add to specific locations in Alum Garden. My thoughts for four beds:
A1: Crocosima and aganpanthus to area which now has hostas that need moving because they are burning up in July/August sun. Add more columbine. Plant zinnias, scabiosa, & coreopsis in raised cutting garden. Need plants in lower bed where daffodils are planted, to cover leaves after bulbs have bloomed. Perhaps mock orange shrub in southeast corner.
A2: Add more hollyhocks, though I’m not sure the bed receives sufficient sun. Plant annual sunflowers in front of the perennial sunflowers in southeast corner.
Need taller plant behind purple coneflowers: perhaps boltonia would work?
Need something growing up fence: honeysuckle? an annual like cardinal climber? [Note: I tried the cardinal climber, but few blooms until middle of September; they need more sun.]
B1 & B2: Add more purple coneflowers to partner with those in A2. Move single rose from B2 to partner with yellow rose in M.
C: In fall, plant snowdrops under yews with the hostas; add ferns behind bench; add short border flowers along walkway, perhaps more dianthus to complement ones already there.
D: Add wooden tower in yew gap; perhaps honeysuckle or clematis? [Note: in 2014, I planted a variegated elderberry in that space but thought it had died. In April of 2015 it re-emerged.]
Need more design pattern at front border; perhaps add several more stachys?
The blue fescue at the eastern end do not effectively fill that space. Need to move them and add plants with foliage that has more substance and structure.
6 Feb. [This day’s journal entry is simply a quote from John Ruskin.] “Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
15 Feb. List of seeds planted in basement on 1 February that have germinated. I was in Maryland and Virginia for the eight days right after sowing. The soil in one tray was completely dried out; the other had retained some moisture and those seeds did much better.
White bouquet ageratum: 8 seeds germinated in 2 “soil blocks”
Aurinia gold dust: 1 seed
Italian basil: dozens germinated in eight soil blocks
Syrian marjoram: 3 seeds in 3 soil blocks
Rosemary: 2 seeds in 2 soil blocks
Paramount parsley: one seed (just emerging)
Soapwort saponaria: dozen seeds in 3 soil blocks
Asclepias: 8 seeds in 4 soil blocks
Missouri primrose: 4 seeds in 3 soil blocks.
Re-sowed parsley, Syrian marjoram, aurinia, rocky mountain columbine, alpine aster, and physostegia.
23 Feb. A summary list of my three online plant orders from Bluestone in Ohio for the Alum Garden. Delivery will be the last week in April or first week in May. I’ll do one more Bluestone order at the end of the month.
1 Agapanthus Summer Skies 3 Astilbe Purple Lance 1 Butterfly Bush (Dwarf Sky Blue)
3 Campanula Joan Eliot 4 Chelone Hot Lips 4 Chrysanthemum Wirral Pride
1 Clematis Red Star 3 Coreopsis American Dream 4 Coreopsis Zagreb
2 Coreopsis Route 66 3 Crocosima Lucifer 4 Dahlias (B. of Llandaff and Kelvin Floodlight)
3 Dicentra Bleeding Heart White 1 Delosperma Mesa Verda 1 Digitalis C. M. Peach
3 Digitalis Camelot Lavender 3 (bags) Acidanthera Bicolor (Peacock Orchids)
6 Fern Lady Red Ferns 3 Geum Prairie Smoke 3 Helleborus Rose Quartz
1 Helleborus Cotton Candy 1 Helenium Dancing Flames 3 Hemerocallis Double Classic
1 Honeysuckle Serotina 1 Hosta Empress Wu 1 Hosta Northern Exposure
3 Platycodon Astra Double Pink 4 Polygonatum Variegatum 3 Rudbeckia Prairie
3 Sedum brilliant 1 Sedum 5 Rex 1 Solidago Peter Pan
1 Tricyrtis Sinonome 3 Tuberose
Some of these plants I already know, confident they will fit in available niches: astilbes, chelones, coreopsis, hostas, platycodons, polygonatums, rudbeckias, sedums, solidago–all have proven track records and should effectively amplify what is already there. Other purchases–such as the agapanthus, the crocosima, and the hellebores–feel more like gambling, a form of garden roulette. Maybe they’ll find a home, maybe they won’t. One more analogy: I’m ordering a group of mail order brides, hoping they will find a home on this western frontier.
26 Feb. Overcast but temp in 40s; beginning to feel like early spring. Drove out to Wickiup with MVM this afternoon. I wanted to correct my garden map, make sure my dimensions are accurate. One surprise: the garden area looked so small. We both recall last spring, when we first paced off the garden plot, it seemed enormous–certainly our largest vegetable garden. Part of the perceptual confusion may have been caused by how the garden is now a rectangle of dark soil, surrounded by swaths of unmowed grass. But I get the same feeling at Coe: after not seeing the garden for several weeks, it always looks small. But as I start working in the garden the space expands.
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□ Gardens are shaped essentially by soil and climate. The gardener contributes a signature scratched on the surface of the contours. The only signatures likely to last are those made by gardeners who work with rather than against the prevailing conditions. . . .
□ Plants present many of the same characteristics as children. The intense period of bringing them on, worrying about the right food and so on, is followed by an equally intense period of trying to rein them in. There’s no equivalent to pruning in childcare, but gardeners have this one enormous advantage over parents.
It is a mistake, though, to look at secateurs primarily as offensive weapons. Good pruning is a matter of working with rather than against a plant. The most important thing, before you make any cuts, is to have clearly in your mind the essential qualities of the plant you are about to attack. . . .
In the most general terms, shrubs that flower in the first half of the year do so on growth made the previous year. These can be pruned after flowering. Shrubs that flower in the second half of the year bear the flowers on the new wood they have made in the first half. These are best not pruned straight after flowering, but left until about now. These are the ones I’m going to concentrate on.
Pruning kicks a shrub into top growing gear. “Crumbs,” it says to itself. “Someone’s trying to do me in,” and it pumps energy into dormant growth buds lying along its stems to replace what it feels it has lost. . . .
Winter-prune wisteria, finishing off the job you started (or should have) last summer. Continue to train in all the growths you want to keep. Cut back the rest of the lateral growths (those spring from the main stem) to two buds. Hard pruning encourages flowering in wisteria, which otherwise produces a mass of leaf. Hot summers also have a marked effect on the following season’s performance.
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[The Garden Journal entries for the first three weeks in March focus on a trip to southwest Texas and Big Bend National Park.]
11 March. This morning walked from the Roadtrek van campsite to the Galveston State Park ranger station to pay for our two nights at the campground. Along the roadway, I encountered the following wild flowers.
• Several patches of gaillardia–blanket flowers. They were all close to the road, all with multiple blooms, brownish burgundy petals and yellow tips, very similar to gaillardia in the Alum Garden. It’s wonderful to see them in their native habitat, useful reminder of where they might be most effectively located at Coe.
• Saw several miniature spiderworts--very short, but lovely purple/blue flowers with gold stamens.
• Saw two plants with yellow blooms: plant shape, leaves, flowers confirmed they were baptisia.
• Many plants with white flowers, about 10 inches tall; probably in the aster family, but I have no idea what they might be.
13 March. Went on a nice walk this morning at Goose Island State Park. With the help of my Wildflowers of Texas Field Guide, was able to identify bluebonnets (had no idea there were so many different varieties), crow poison (small, white blooms on single stalk; in the onion family), Indian blanket, Texas lantana (next to toilet; distinctive combination of outer orange blossoms and inner yellow blossoms), a phlox (lovely, low-lying annual with bright purple/red blooms), bluestem prickly poppy (lovely large white blooms), prairie nymph (tiny blue, low-lying iris), Texas ragwort (similar to a ragwort we saw in England in October), and golden tickseed.
17 March. Spent the day driving along roads in Big Bend National Park. We visited three deserted farmsteads. The first was Sam Nail’s ranch. One side of the adobe house was still standing, a windmill still pumping water. The farmstead badly overgrown with vegetation armed with stickers/thorns. Near the windmill we found 3 pecan trees planted by Nail and upon reaching the dry creek bed, encountered many willows and two large cottonwoods, both in full green leaf. Saw hackberry trees with many small berries at the top.
Along the roadside saw:
• Tall, Big Bend Bluebonnets, a species unique to this area.
• Many Ocotillo, just coming into bloom, with red blossoms at the top of long slender branches, often over 10' tall. They look like they should be cacti but read they’re a kind of sandalwood. Could see green leaves just beginning to emerge.
• Saw many prickly pear with gorgeous yellow blooms and red interiors; many cacti blooms just beginning to open.
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□ “Spring is in the Air”
Perhaps you’ve turned to a gardening column to get away from recession fever and banker phobia. Bad luck. But gardeners are surely in a fortunate position. The value of the patches we look out on every day–the real value I mean, not some notional price per square foot dreamed up by a wonky estate agent–doesn’t zoom up and down because of events out of our control. Its pleasures don’t diminish because the stock market is dropping like lead. The plant for which you paid £2.50 yesterday is still worth that today (in fact it is surely worth three times that–the cheapness of plants is one of life’s great mysteries).
Only fools view their gardens in monetary terms, supposing that any amount spent on hard landscaping must automatically be grappled back in the asking price of their houses. The real point of a garden is to increase the value of our lives. It gives us the best chance we have of fitting ourselves back into a world that cities make us forget. A garden locks you into the slow inevitable rolling out of the seasons, cycles of growth and decay, the lengthening of days and shortening of shadows.
A garden gives pleasure, instils calm, grafts patience into your soul. Gardening slows you down, masks worries, puts them in proportion. A garden teaches you to be observant and how to look at things. You become less inclined to leap to quick conclusions. Or to jump on the latest bandwagon. A garden hones your senses. You can hear the sound of dampness creaking through the soil and smell it hovering in different guises over the compost heap. In a garden, you never feel lonely.
Nor can you ever feel bored. Though constant in the sense that it is rooted in one particular place (and roots you with it–that is an important part of its power), it is deliciously inconstant in its particulars. The light falls on it and reflects from it in a different way every day. Breezes move through it from different directions. Trees provide different silhouettes at different times of the year. And from now on, the arrival and disappearance of seasonal plants happen almost faster than you can keep up with. And this is all free. You don’t need wads of money to garden.
The best trick it plays, at this time of the year, is that you never quite remember how it’s going to be, that first day you go outside and can stay outside all day, fiddling about with jobs that aren’t pressing enough to weight heavily, but will nevertheless pay dividends. A garden is made up on thousands of small interventions; each one represents a choice, though you aren’t thinking like that when you finally fetch the fork to heave out a bramble. It’s just that the bramble has got to the point where it’s more in your sight than not. And experience has taught you that if you don’t hoik it out, a stem will drop and root and before you know it there will be a patch rather than a plant.
I had a great Saturday, the first warm day of the year, doing jobs like that–nothing too daunting. It was a day of reacquaintance, ambling about the place, fitting myself back into the plot. I could have spent the entire day carting mushroom compost up the bank to the bed where the cyclamen and eucomis grow. But though, in its way, this is a rewarding job, like feeding a family, it’s also physically quite demanding. The bank is too steep to push barrowloads of mulch up to the border and I have to cart it up in buckets, which takes much longer.
So I larded that job with other quieter ones: ten buckets followed by a session in the gravelled yard on the west side of the house, which is always a pleasing place to work, because it is so small. Iris lazica and Iris unguicularis grow there in rubble against the west wall; cleaning up a clump of Iris lazica (darker blue flowers and brighter green leaves than I. unguicularis) absorbed more time than, at busier times of the gardening year, is available to give, but on this morning, it was a perfect limbering-up exercise. Dead leaves pull quite easily, half-dead leaves have to be cut. General debris and snails need to be cleaned from the centre of the clump and more gravel needs to be added where I prised out some dandelions and unwanted evening primrose.
Your mind goes into delicious limbo when you are doing jobs such as this. They are undemanding, but in terms of improving the general look of things, very rewarding. . . . And so that happy day passed: more buckets of mushroom compost carted to the cyclamen bed, viticella clematis and wisteria pruned and tied in, holly cut back where it was dropping too low over snowdrops, the last of the Paperwhite hyacinths carried out of the house. Rhododendron fragrantissimum carried in. A quiet day at Lake Wobegon. But each small act a defence (defiance even) against a world without anchors or safe harbours. Gardening–recession-proof, I’d say.
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30 March. This morning met with Kendra in Alum Garden. We assembled and set up the new black metal plant supports for the tansy and baptisia. We also brought the chipper/shredder from winter storage in my garage. We then planned our garden jobs for the next few weeks. In afternoon met with Chris and we agreed to start the Open Garden days the first Monday in April. Obtained a new keyboard and mouse for the new laptop, and we now have a functioning computer in the garden shed; this will be immensely helpful in maintaining our records and garden journal. This evening Lisa sent me an email, indicating there is now a link to the garden website on the Alum House website. A day of progress on many fronts–though we are still waiting to obtain a permanent URL. – Most of my afternoon was tilling and constructing raised beds at Wickiup. I tilled about 1/4 of the garden, enough to handle all the planting that will occur in the next four weeks (not counting the potatoes). I did plant some snow peas and set up the old metal cages for them to climb on. The soil worked beautifully. I kept pushing myself past sunset, suspecting it would rain this evening.
31 March. Arrived at the garden at 10:00 a.m. Temperature was 45F, humidity at 80%, overcast, minimal breeze. It rained 0.7” last night. Perfect rain for this time of year. I walked around the garden and recorded everything that showed new growth. I had not expected so many perennials to get started so early.
Trees/shrubs budding out: edelberry, flowering crab (the espalier has beautiful red leaves), viburnum buds just emerging, yews are beginning to bud out, forsythia still in bloom, red twig dogwood is budding.
Flowers’ new growth: columbine, lychnis lipstick (dark burgundy basal leaves), several goldenrod, several dianthus, crystal peak obedient plants, several varieties of nepeta, gypsophilia, chives (ready to harvest), gooseberry, corydalis (from Field Station), all the roses, cranesbill, hyssop, rue, lavender, St. John’s wort, several thyme (e.g., Annie Hall, winter), several sedum cultivars, several alliums, all the yarrow, spurge, Siberian iris, some hostas, tansy, salvia, poppies, shasta daisies, several speedwell cultivars, columbine, most of the asters, nettles, sage, Karl Foerster grass, rudbeckia, purple coneflowers, scabiosa, several penstemon cultivars, potentilla, phalaris (aggressively spreading), mums (several cultivars), baptisia just beginning, marguerite, sneezeweed, salvia, coreopsis, monarda, peonies, phlox, artemisia, briza media, brunnera (beautiful), lady’s mantle (covered with rain drop jewels), sempervivum (all look good), rock cress (currently the star of the garden with lovely white blooms), lewisia, bleeding heart, both ground covers in “M” (at the moment drawing a blank on their names). I need to trim the thyme and the “spruce” sedum in the rock/crevice gardens. I’ll wait a week before trimming the yews—which appear to have come thru the winter in great shape. They look dramatically better than in 2014, after that long, tough, cold, windy winter.