What a relief it was to be back in the garden after a long spell of ice, snow and heavy rains. I was beginning to suffer from the unease that always descends at being barred from garden-tending for more than a few days.
Like most people with gardens, as soon as the snow had mostly melted into the ground I was out checking for damage from the weight of snow or from the low temperatures during the week following Christmas.
In the front garden, my prized seed-grown Daphne retusa plants had retained their tightly rounded, compact shape. A Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternata) shrub, which I feared had been squished under the snow, had bounced back nicely.
In the food garden, all three kale varieties were fine. They’ve supplied me with sprightly greens for salads since mid-January and, as the weather begins warming a little, the plants will expand with vigour into full production.
The carrots and beets, protected under several layers of old floating row cover fabric, came through the nasty weather brilliantly. I’m relishing the sweet crunch of juicy carrots, newly pulled from the ground and scrubbed.
Through the late fall and early winter I’d been monitoring three husky plants growing on a supporting length of wire fencing, under a trained honeysuckle edging one of the vegetable plots. They were a semi-vining petunia called ‘Tickled Blush’ — a follow-up variety last year to the first of its kind — ‘Tickled Pink.’
Last year’s Tickled Blush plants were unusually robust, blooming under the honeysuckle and also in an old metal washtub well past mid-autumn. They were still green and healthy in December. One of the plants is still green. I’m leaving all three in the ground, to see whether they might re-sprout. It seems unlikely, but then the plants have displayed pleasantly unlikely traits for a petunia. Tickled Pink and Tickled Blush are listed in the online catalogue of T&T Seeds.
Setting the table. On the first semi-useable day this month I advanced purposefully into the back garden holding a clipboard bearing sheets of paper that mapped out the vegetable plot plantings of recent years. Referring to the past years’ vegetable placements helps me to keep each type of vegetable moved around from year to year.
It was with some satisfaction that I finished fine-tuning the plan for 2022 — like setting the table for a fine future feast.
I feel strongly impelled, conditions permitting, to aim for early plantings of the hardier vegetables. I mapped out and have begun preparing the sites for three broad bean varieties.
I usually plant broad beans in March, but I remember a 92-year old gardener visiting the garden and telling me that he always planted broad beans on Christmas day and again in March. The two plantings produced at the same time, but the early planting gave twice the yield. This was due, he thought, to the time the early plants had to develop more extensive root systems.
A desire for early planting is not just a whim. Cool weather plants like peas and leafy greens do not do well in extreme heat. As early a start as possible will allow the plantings to become established enough to withstand the stress should another “heat dome” afflict us in early summer.
I’ll be seeding lettuces indoors next week, for transplanting under plastic tunnelling in March, and I’m aiming for seeding peas, beets and carrots in February rather than the usual March timing — all to get them well under way while the weather remains reasonably cool.
Elizabeth England lecture. The Victoria Hardy Plant Group will host the 2022 Elizabeth England Lecture featuring Midori Shintani, head gardener of Tokachi Millennium Forest in Hokkaido, Japan, via Zoom on Thursday, Feb. 10, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Midori’s presentation on Gardening at Tokachi Millennium Forest will describe the unique modern garden movement in Japan and explain how she and her garden team nurture the 400 acres of native forests and the cultivated garden areas through the seasons. She will link her gardening methods to their roots in the accumulated wisdom of ancient Japanese belief and culture.
The lecture is free to all, with pre-registration, which can be found at the Hardy Plant Group website. Scroll down through details on the lecture to “All are welcome! Register for free here.”
