Test Site for What Grows On in Rhode Island!

If you’ve been by in the last couple of days you may have noticed that the usually colorful blog has become a somewhat starker landscape (where did all the pictures go?!) that is not unlike my actual view out the potting shed window at the moment.  While the blank blog is experiencing technical difficulties (help is on the way!), Blithewold is resting under a blanket of snow.  Here are a few gray and white snow day pictures from my walks around the property yesterday that will have to tide us over until all the other colors on the property (and the blog) come back.  Please stand by!

High 28 FLow 14 F It is hard to believe that this is the scene yet again on a Sunday morning! The birds are fighting for food and the snow is flying. At least it is my weekend off so... Layanee DeMerchant

In northern areas, skunks pass through a winter sleep (not a real hibernation) similar to that of the bears, and which can last 75-100 days. -- All You Need to Know About Skunks I'm smelling fresh skunk as I type,...

I happened to find a Euphorbia in early October, 2008 and thought I would just try one as a house plant. I did not pay any attention to the plastic label that said "Diamond Frost" and "Annual Euphorbia" or "AWARD...

High 15 FLow 9 F With those temperatures above, there is nothing blooming outside at Ledge and Gardens and inside, at this time of year with low light levels, there are just a couple of plants with flowers showing. The... Layanee DeMerchant

Depending on where you live, it can take a treasure hunt to find something blooming during the middle of winter.  Some people go south to find color - the Caribbean, for instance, would be a brilliant treasure trove right about now.  Other people (like me) stay close to home and go out to greenhouses to find blooms.  And we’re the lucky ones who can sometimes bring blooming things back home.

Winter in a cold climate is tough season for houseplants though.  Most indoor heat is too dry for humidity loving plants to thrive.  There are things we can do to mitigate the dryness though, and our bodies (the insides of our noses, elbow skin…) might appreciate the effort as much as the plants.  Place bowls or kettles of water on stoves/heaters/radiators - you’d be surprised how quickly the water evaporates.  Keep your plants in dishes filled with pebbles and a little water - only make sure that the plant is not left in standing water unless that’s the culture it prefers.  And get more plants!  The more plants you have, the more humid your home will be because plants transpire out the water they have taken in.  That’s why walking into a full greenhouse feels so good this time of year.  Sounds skeevy to say it but we crave plants’ moist breath.

Some plants like these Camellias really need more humidity that the average warm home can provide.  Logee’s Greenhouse website recommends 50% humidity and nights below 60 Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 < ![endif]--> degrees (down to 35 Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 < ![endif]-->) for the plants to be healthy and set buds.  Other than that they’re easy - they only need partial sun, water when dry and they don’t want fertilizer.  (That’s my kind of plant.)

Gail and I and a friend took a quick last minute trip to Logee’s in Danielson, CT earlier this week.  Even if you live with or work in a greenhouse like we do, it’s good to get out and breathe in another.  And that one is amazing.  It’s full of venerable specimens and ginormous stock plants growing, flowering and fruiting like miracles out of the floor.  If you can get there, do!  And, of course, if you’re near to here, you’re more than welcome to stop by our chilly but deliciously humid greenhouses for a breather too - the door is open!  (Figuratively speaking - it’s still wicked cold outside!)

Many thanks as always to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for keeping us searching for blooms the middle of every month.  Where did you find blooms this month?

Just a random garden shot from July '08Most of us who blog have been asked horticultural advice from others at one time or another. Some of us give horticultural advice as part of our jobs and part of our lives.... Layanee DeMerchant

We’re bracing for a chilly visitor coming this week from the Great Lakes and although we’re not exactly rolling out the red carpet for her, we’re stocking the cupboards and making sure there’s plenty of cocoa on hand.  When we’re told that the temperatures are going to dip into the single digits with forecasts of windchill in the negative 20’s my anxiety gene kicks on.  I start worrying like I’m told my great grandfather did, over the fate of our precious plants.

The greenhouse has a sophisticated system of furnaces that keeps the temperature of the houses within a very reliable range and the structure is as solid and tight as anything made mostly of glass and aluminum can be.  The only thing we’re lacking is the assurance of a good back up heating system in the worst-case-scenario of the power going out.  What we do have is a temperature sensor hooked up through the phones lines and set up to call us at home if the greenhouse temperature plunges.  And there’s a heater or two ready to go that will probably send out enough heat to keep the houses from falling below freezing.  What would be more reassuring of course is having a generator that could power the furnaces - but that’s a pie in the sky for another budget year.  For now, we’ll bundle up, crank the heat and cross our fingers and toes that our arctic visitor goes back to Canada without stealing any of our stuff for souvenirs.  And since our “stuff” is a large priceless part of what makes the Blithewold gardens the Blithewold gardens and represents hours, days, months, years, decades of work, it’s no wonder that Gail and I get nervous about the worst case scenario.

How do you prepare for cold weather?  Do you worry excessively (like me)?  Do you have a backup plan?

I awoke to yet another snowy, Sunday morning preventing me from getting to work on the radio show which airs live from six a.m. to ten a.m. every Sunday morning on WRKO out of Boston, MA. It is a good... Layanee DeMerchant

I’m beginning to think that the task Gail and I are working on now might be the most physically exhausting of all the jobs we do.  Forget dividing daylilies, planting, lugging bags of soil or watering at noon during a heat wave.  Sitting in the chilly potting shed, trolling magazines for ideas and browsing seed catalogs has flattened me.  I feel like the bamboo looked this past Tuesday morning.  I feel glazed.  I feel heavy.  I feel like lying down for a while.

A “wintry mix” encapsulated the gardens earlier this week and if it hadn’t turned to plain rain and kept on dripping, I might have lingered outside with my camera to try to capture more frozen images.  But instead Gail and I sat right down at the potting shed table, leaned our elbows on the radiator and began flipping through magazines and catalogs and talking about what we want to see in the gardens this coming year.  And I’m finding that if I don’t invent an excuse to get up and move actively around the greenhouse, I’m liable to sink into a stupor.  Occasionally a plant (a variegated eryngium!) or a germ of an idea for one of the gardens perks me back up like the bamboo which is (mostly) vertical again.  And hopefully as we go through and complete this task (we’ll have the orders sent by the end of January), I’ll get more and more enlivened about the gardens we’re planning and less inclined to glaze over.

Please don’t get me wrong - I’m not complaining.  I love this part of our job - the dreaming and planning and browsing - and I’d much rather be doing this than outside digging holes with Fred and Dan!  But is sitting still difficult for you too?  (Maybe Gail and I should set up treadmills side by side in the potting shed for the month of January…)  What do you do to stay alert and focused during your garden’s dream stage?

High 32 FLow 27 F The garden has taken on a clear coating of ice today. Ice is so very beautiful and so destructive. The ice builds up around the greenhouse office which is one step lower than grade and... Layanee DeMerchant

While walking and driving could be treacherous, the ice-covered shrubs, tree branches and several objects in my garden look magnificently beautiful. I just had to run out to visually record the beauty of the ice halo and icy wings of...

Have you ever wondered how some of the plants I've blogged have grown and aged over the months and years, especially the indoor plants? It is my pleasure to report that most of them are alive, and thriving. The...

It’s time to dive into catalogs!  I’ve been staring at the growing stack of them on the potting shed table for nearly 2 weeks now, waiting for Gail to return from vacation, and resisting the urge to begin the browse.  (We shop as a team.)  But there are a couple of catalogs that I just can’t keep myself from flipping through and others that I’m inclined to recycle without a glance because of where my head is this year.  Over the summer I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara and Camille Kingsolver and Stephen L. Hopp; last month I read In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan and right now I’m in the middle of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, also by M. Pollan.  These three books have me thinking differently not only about food but about ordering seeds.  Call me naive, but this time last year I didn’t know that most of the seed companies we order from are either owned by Monsanto (the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds and the largest seed company in the world) or buy seeds from them.  I also didn’t know that

…in 1981 there were approximately 5,000 vegetable seed varieties available in U.S. catalogs. Today there are less than 500, a 90 percent reduction.

-from The gardening game By Jerri Cook Wisconsin

Gail and I will be shopping primarily for ornamentals - mostly flowers, some veggies (Super Volunteer Dick orders seeds for the vegetable bed) - and we’ll still order from our usual array of companies (including Johnny’s, Territorial, Stokes, Burpee, Thompson & Morgan, Seeds of Change, Jung, and Pinetree) because they do carry seeds for some of the plants we love to grow and I’m all for encouraging those sources to keep providing our favorites.  But I’m really looking forward to placing big orders (maybe larger than usual) with Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds because that’s where my head is.  These companies (Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit membership organization) sell open pollinated seeds even though (and because) it means we might save seed (we do!) and not have to buy the same thing from them again.  They sell heirloom varieties that our grandparents might have grown.  The cool thing is that, like me, more and more people are interested in these varieties and the selection grows every year.

Have you read any of the books I mentioned?  (Have they changed your life?)  If you’re in the area and have read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - or want to, it happens to be the selection for the very first “Book Worms” Book Club meeting on February 23rd hosted by Blithewold and the Norman Bird Sanctuary.  Please join us!

Do you have favorite seed catalogs?  Do you make a point of ordering heirloom varieties?  Do you save seed?

There is still snow on the ground which brings the leftover perennials into high relief. The starkness of the landscape makes one appreciate the intricacies of these plants which during the height of summer can be missed in favor of... Layanee DeMerchant

My new narcissus, received as a Christmas gift in a decorative planter, started to show signs of growth soon after the watering about 2 weeks ago. Kept in a relatively cool spot with plenty of indirect light, they grew mush...

High 16 FLow 3 F The new year arrived with the bitter cold of winter and a new blanket of snow. The stark gray of a snowless landscape is an energy drain for me and, I am sure, many others.... Layanee DeMerchant

With the finish line of Christmas behind us and an official fresh start still days away, this week feels a little slack-tide to me.  I’ve been torn between taking a winter’s nap and projecting (day dreaming) about what’s next.  But before diving headfirst into the next garden year and the stack of catalogs waiting for orders, I’m taking this time for reflection.  One of my end of the year tasks is to organize the hundreds of pictures I’ve taken on the property since last January and aside from re-reading the blog, there’s no better way for me to look back on the year.

I’ve been reminded about some of the things we learned - like:

A little Espoma Bulb-Tone fertilizer (4-10-6) thrown in with the annuals when we planted them made them sing like rockstars.

And after 3 straight summers of raking dead leaves out from under the roses twice a week, we learned that good hygiene really can slow down black spot.

When we planned for the ‘Karma Fuchsiana’ dahlias to be a major bright spot in the North Garden, we learned that it’s not a good idea to lean heavily on mail order plants.  (Alas, the tubers we ordered were duds.)

I’ve been reminded about plants I loved and plants I loathed:  I loved the towering teasel and cardoons.  I also adored the tiny basil blobs and ornamental hot peppers.  I was thrilled by the way the Display Garden came together with Fred and Dan’s new design and Gail’s and my plant combinations.  But I didn’t much like the daylilies or the phlox in the North Garden.

And I’ve been reminded to remember the people who have come into this garden over this past year and those who have gone.  Amazingly, visitation was up at Blithewold even though gas prices spiked.  Gail and I worked with the most wonderful volunteer crew on the planet and an incredibly dedicated team on staff.  And I am so lucky to have you out there in the world, reading this.

Are you going through your pictures and reflecting on the past year in your garden too?  What have you learned?  What did you love?

Merry Christmas to all from Tucker and the gang at Ledge and Gardens. Layanee DeMerchant

In the middle of a cold blast, chilly on the heels of a dark and snowy Solstice storm, I’m on the lookout for Joy (’Tis the season, Fa la la la la).  But, luckily, I don’t have to look hard to find it.  No matter how stressful the holidays can be with family weirdness, travel difficulties and financial worries, we gardeners know where to look for - and find - a whole bunch of Joy.

It’s in the lengthening days from here on in and the optimism of another spring, summer and fall to come.

It’s in our faces and the faces of our friends when we laugh.

It’s in the frogs and bees and praying mantises that we know will be back.

It’s in the plants we love-love-love to grow.

It’s in bark and Swiss chard and the opinions of fellow gardeners.

We have so much to look forward to and so much to look back on - all that Joy is almost overwhelming.  ‘Tis the season to pass it on!  Joy to the World, friends and gardeners and Happy Holidays!