Seed starting (asterisk)

This year, it seems mandatory for any lifestyle article to include tips on “how to save money.” The gardening industry is no exception, and one of the things that people tout to save money is starting your ornamental plants from seed. Most articles claim that it is “cheap and easy”. I won’t argue with “cheap”, but I’m beginning to add a big mental asterisk to “easy”. As in: “Starting things from seed is cheap and easy”*

*As long as you have exactly the right spot, sow the seeds exactly the right way, and don’t mind re-sowing three or four times. Oh, and those lovely pictures of fields of waving flowers on seed packets? Sometimes seed packets lie. (I know! There should be a law!)

This summer, I’ve been frustrated by poppy flowers. I love poppies of all kinds and in all stages of development, and only recently did it occur to me that I could buy some seeds and plant them in my garden! How exciting! It will be cheap and easy!



Two months after sowing: only a few scraggly seedlings. But, but, but! I did everything on the packet! Where are my fields of waving California poppies? Fortunately for my disappointment, I ran across a blog post by one of our authors, Tracy DiSabato-Aust.

She lists the Oriental poppy as one of her top 50 best plants, and gives some tips on how to grow them. She says to try a large quantity of seeds – ½ a pound or more - and to try direct-sowing the seeds in February or March.



This is good to know for my gardening plans for next year – now I just have to find out where to buy poppy seeds by the pound. Bagel stores?

Chani West-Foyle, Marketing Associate

Deer Fence

Friends asked me the other day why I looked so happy. I spun around, leapt up in the air and did a double cartwheel-backflip, shouting DEER FENCE!!! These guys know me pretty well and are prone to forgive and even encourage my embarrassing public excesses, so they jubilantly sang deer fence, deer fence with me as we linked arms and skipped down the street.

Okay, I’m exaggerating.

But not much. Any gardener who’s had her sacred plot ravaged by deer knows what a ten-foot tall fence means. Peace, sanity, preservation of a way of life. Not to mention tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, okra, and green beans--all homegrown like they’re s’posed to be. Are you surprised I fenced the veggies first? A gardener’s got to eat well to do her best work, right?



I did slip a few flowers into our 16x16 space: zinnias, nasturtiums (hey, they’re edible), mammoth sunflowers, climbing hyacinth beans and moon vine. I deliberately did not start adding plants like coleus and elephant ears from my collection of deer-tasty tropicals. That way madness lay, or at least serious overcrowding, which would earn me evil looks and loud complaints from my fence-building partner. Those plants will just have to enjoy one more summer in containers. Luckily, deer leave lots of tropicals untouched, so I can still grow cannas, bananas, lantanas, ginger lilies, salvias, and funky-smelling plectranthus unprotected.



Now that we have fresh pesto and tomato sandwiches covered, my partner and I can concentrate on fencing the rest of the garden. Next time my friends see me, I may just be somersaulting over a star!

Pam Baggett, author of Tropicalismo

Hopefully My Viburnum Will Forgive Me

Dear Viburnum,

I’m sorry that I pruned you almost down to the ground last weekend.



I really enjoyed having you in my backyard. You had lovely flowers and foliage, and you gave the sparrows somewhere to sit while they chattered away about whatever sparrows chatter about. You were grand. Except – you were a little too big. You loomed over my kale, making it lean waaaay over to the side in an attempt to get at the sun. So I thought I would prune you down, and have the best of both worlds – a lovely Viburnum, and a lovely patch of straight-up-and-down kale.



I may have put too much trust in the phrase “Viburnums are forgiving of pruning.”

You are now very, very short, and bereft of leaves. I feel like a murderer – or at least an overconfident and foolish gardener. I really, really hope that you come back. I am even prepared to break my “no watering the ornamentals” rule and provide you with some water over the summer, so you have some sustenance during your long convalescence. Or at least, I hope it is convalescence, and not a death rattle.

After I was done pruning, I got an excellent view of the sparrows sunning themselves on the neighbor’s garage, which was previously blocked by your foliage. The looked like little pats of butter, softening down onto the roof in the sun. But I’m sure they are plotting vengeance.

I hope you make it. I’ll deliver your first bonus serving of water tonight.

Chani West-Foyle, Marketing Associate and Guilty Shrub Killer

Succulent Serendipity

A number of gardens in Portland feature Semperviviums, or "Hens and Chicks". They do really well here, growing up rock walls and covering swaths of vertical landscaping. I've always really liked them, and wanted them in my own garden.

My neighbors down the street have some lovely examples.



The problem, for me, is that since there are so many of these things everywhere, I've always felt like I shouldn't bother to buy a Sempervivium - surely one will appear in my path one of these days! I admire my neighbor's plants whenever I walk by, but I've never screwed up the courage to knock on their door and ask them if they would mind if I took a "chick" home with me.

I was just mentioning this to a friend yesterday. Then, as I walked along the sidewalk towards home - there it was! A little Sempervivium, orphaned, right in my path!



I hope it makes lots and lots of babies.

Chani West-Foyle

Low-Maintenance

Other than vegetables, I subscribe to the “if it needs extra water, it doesn’t deserve to live” theory, which means that a lot of the ornamental that were in my front yard when I bought my house didn’t make it through their first year with me. It’s like the Marines, I like to tell myself: “the few, the proud - the ones who can do without water for four months.” A co-worker of mine says “I don’t kill plants – I just watch them die,” and I find that distinction very comforting when I think about the fate of those dearly departed perennials. (I don’t even know their names. I’m a monster.)



In the empty spots that somehow keep popping up in my front yard, I plan to plant things that are tough ‘n hardy, purty, impervious to neglect, and will give the crab grass a run for its money. Native plants are excellent for this sort of application – many of them are adapted to where I live anyway, so won’t require much care once established. Plus, they have the added bonus of providing food for local wildlife. One of our books, 50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants is also an excellent source of plants that require minimal care – every single plant in there is of the “plant it and forget it” variety. (Or, rather, “plant it and forget it, except when you are noticing how attractive it is.”) Thirdly, there is a book that we’ll publish at the end of the year that sounds right up my alley – The New Low-Maintenance Garden, by Valerie Easton. The parts of the book that I have seen are gorgeous and chock full of all kinds of beautiful, low-maintenance gardens, any one of which I would be happy to find serendipitously plopped down in front of my house. This book will go on my Christmas list.

I love a beautiful garden, but I have trouble keeping up with 4 raised beds of vegetables, and that’s only about 120 square feet. So I am always pleased to find books that recommend plants and techniques for fuss-free garden beauty. Maybe someday I'll have a full-fledged, 40-hour-a-week garden - but I'm not aiming to have one of those anytime soon.

Chani West-Foyle, Marketing Associate

Lessons from The Plant Explorer

Last night I went to a talk given by Dan Hinkley, plant explorer extraordinaire. He has the enviable job of traveling around the world (I know) and hunting down new plants species and cultivars (I know!) to introduce to the gardeners of North America.

He described the process that he goes through to collect the seeds, clean them, and bring them to the US to be grown and tested before being introduced to the public at large. I learned, among other things, that seeds can take up to four years to sprout! (At the three year mark, one should begin warning the seeds that if they don't shape up and sprout soon, it's the compost pile for them.) This was a "duh" moment once it was explained to me - if all the seeds sprouted at once, and there was a drought, or, say, a very hungry caterpillar, that particular species of plant might not have survived for long. Staggering the germination rate gives the seeds multiple chances to take over the world. Seeds win!



I also wondered about the reasons for choosing a particular plant to bring back for testing. After all, when one is hiking in the wilds of (insert any country - he's probably been there), there are doubtless many trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, EVERYTHING, all vying for attention. Dan said that he is typically drawn to plants that have interesting foliage, since flowers are fleeting, and he is often traveling in the fall. Other plant explorers may go for textured bark, or flowers, or plants that only grow upside down, but he likes foliage.



And the last lesson - if you are buying a house, and it is named "Windcliff", don't assume that it is just a quaint, lovely name. Assume that it means that your house is perched on a cliff and that it will be constantly buffeted by huge gusts of wind, and plan accordingly.

Chani West-Foyle, marketing associate

Weeds

Garden magazines recommend that you begin getting rid of your weeds early in the season, so they won’t balloon into backyard monsters, intimidating the timid and spreading seeds far and wide. It is excellent advice. I recommend it--two thumbs up!



However, in a classic example of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, my weeds get away from me every year. They have a quiet way of putting on spurts of growth beyond your wildest expectations, and the weed that yesterday was modest (“I’ll just pull it tomorrow”) is now Godzilla in the backyard. And I can’t remember how Godzilla was brought down, but I imagine that it took something drastic, and I don’t know where in Portland to get flamethrowers and bomber aircraft.



Once weeds reach Godzilla size, I start to regard them less as weeds and more as volunteer ornamentals. I am interested to see how they manage, what kind of flowers they will have, how they survive in the toughest environments in my garden. I’ve encountered some lovely weeds this way--and if I don’t have anything to plant it that particular spot, why not leave the weeds be?



Some of my weeds are attractive enough that I’m thinking about how I can naturalize them in other areas of the garden. After all, they have proved that they can survive on neglect and abuse--which I find very attractive in a perennial.



Chani West-Foyle, marketing associate

Stoner Bees

I have some California poppies in my backyard, and I like to watch the bees discover them. They lounge about in the middle of the flower, rolling over and losing their balance and falling off, only to fly back on a second later. They seem to get impatient with the flowers if they haven’t opened early enough--jamming their heads and bodies into the still closed flower and forming a little orange, vibrating package of petal, sometimes with a stray leg poking out.

It’s hard not to anthropomorphize them--they look so funny as they stumble from the California poppies, to the clover, to the rosemary, and back to the poppies again, covered with pollen and flying crooked. I know that they are supposed to be busy critters, but since I can’t tell them apart, it seems like there are just a few bees who hang out on the flowers all day, getting drunk on pollen. Teenagers these days!

I always like seeing them, though. It’s like finding earthworms in your dirt--you must be doing something right. This year I planted some crimson clover, and it finally flowered and lived up to its name.



The bees haven’t hit the crimson clover vintage as much as the rosemary and California poppy vintage, but maybe they’ll ease into it. I’ll continue to host punch-drunk honeybees and wallowing bumblebees in the Backyard Flower Bar, and maybe they’ll pollinate some of my vegetables if I promise not to call their parents.

Chani West-Foyle, marketing associate

Moss Carpet

Over the weekend, I spent some time halfheartedly pulling up dandelions in my front yard. I am quite fond of dandelions--I love that they smell like honey, I love that you can eat them, I love how cheerful they look all over my front lawn. I buy the statement “they loosen impacted soil.” And (I should really look both ways before admitting this), I love blowing dandelion seeds all over the place. (It’s a thrill when you pick one that you can denude of seeds all in one breath.) But my very kind neighbors on each side of me have immaculate green lawns, and I hate to think of them looking at my yellow-studded lawn and having chest palpitations. Dandelions are nothing if not democratic in choosing where to grow. So in the interest of neighborly harmony, I try to keep the dandelions from getting too out of control.

This year, my front lawn will be subject to my first foray into ornamental gardening. I’ve always been an enthusiastic vegetable gardener, but only recently have I had the urge to put in some ornamentals. (Mostly to avoid mowing, I must admit.) As I weeded, I thought about my current lack of plans, and how I should really get going on that, and also about how wonderful the moss growing in my front yard is. It is so soft and plush and green. I realize that it means that I have horrible drainage and soil quality (impacted soil! Bring on the dandelions!), but it was impossible to care. It felt like I was wearing knee pads--if it hadn’t been raining (plus very public), it would have been the perfect soft spot for an outdoor nap. Perhaps I should try to keep a mossy area in my front yard after all--good thing I work in an office that has a whole book on moss gardening!

Chani West-Foyle, marketing associate