What's up in the garden?

If it's any consolation, Ann, a dusting of snow fell here last night. And hungy herbivores have devoured my crocuses. Even the Chionodoxa has been browsed. The deer are getting desperate!

It's been a crazy weather day. It was 4C at dawn, and still below 10C and cloudy when I went off to a doctor's appointment in the morning. By the time I returned home the sun had broken through the clouds and the outdoor temperature had rocketed to 23C, and inside the greenhouse it was 35C. Oops! I should have opened up the greenhouse before I left. All day, there were showers off and on, and rumbles of thunder. Then in the late afternoon the real storms arrived, with wind so strong it ripped bird feeders off the laundry line, and rain so heavy the pond looked like it was boiling. Despite all that, Daphne mezereum 'Album' decided it was a good day to bloom.

I later learned that a tornado touched down about 20km away during the storms on April 18, so I'm feeling lucky that everything in my garden didn't go "up and away".

From 23C the temperature has dropped to -1C, and now it's snowing. Sigh!

The temperature roller-coaster is going up again. Despite a series of frosty nights, the days are now quite mild. Pulsatilla vulgaris has opened its hairy buds in the sunny rock garden. In the shade on the other side of the house, pink Corydalis solida 'Beth Evans' is blooming. 'Beth Evans' seeded herself, and I got all excited, but then all her offspring turned out to be muddy mauve.

I had one tiny snow drop and one tiny pushkinia.
The tulip and daffodil leaves are coming.
I think we are late this year----I'll have to check my old journals.
There are lots of seedlings all over the house.
My lighted shelves are full.
Now I am moving geraniums to the north windows so,--
I can use south windows for tomatoe plants.

Hooray, Caroline! Flowers in your garden at last! You have one more pushkinia than I have. Every spring I realize I don't have at least one desirable bulb, but by the time the fall bulb cataogs arrive I've forgotten what it was. I'd better go and write myself a reminder to order pushkinias.

I was looking at my flowering-time records yesterday, and the first blooms were late this year, but no worse than other late springs I've recorded. It's not the end of the world as we know it (yet).

I hope you don't run out of spaces for the seedlings in your house! I can see flower buds forming on some of my potted cactus plants in the greenhouse. I'm always worried about over-watering the cacti, but if the weather is going to stay mild I'll risk giving them a drink. The pots of species cyclamen have finished flowering and their foliage is starting to die off, so they don't need much water now either. On the other hand, the containerized shrubs have begun to produce new leaves, so they're thirsty. I'm glad I didn't schedule a vacation for this time period, as I'd never have been able to trust DH with the watering.

No,-- I do my vacationing in the winter,
and my grandchildren are banned from visiting--
until I get the plants outside.

Today I found two Himalayan Blue poppies have come back.
That is two winters for them-----they are smack north of the house,
and right outside the laundry room window.

This message was edited Apr 24, 2013 3:05 PM

2 feet of snow is *up* in my backyard, ~ 1 foot in the front....on the North side we have 6 feet of the white stuff happily surviving (until tomorrow).

Oh and our river is also *up* and will continue growing and spreading this weekend.

Neighbour's basements and garages are already flooding.

Look out Manitoba have we ever got one *cough* gift for you! :S

Six months worth of snow still out there (~275 cm worth well compacted now and just waiting to transform). Pic shot yesterday.....

Yikes! That is alot of snow and water!
I guess it comes with the spring thaw.

Oh boy, that's a lot of snow waiting to melt! Lilypon, I earnestly wish you a gradual spring thaw. Do you have a way to keep your basement dry? I'm in a valley, with a stream-fed pond close to the house. The pond and stream have overflowed several times already this spring, and groundwater is very high. My house's basement has a sump pump, and I can connect the pump to a generator when the power goes out. So far, the sump pump is working hard, but coping (fingers crossed).

CLScott yep it is a lot of snow....record breaking to be exact. :'( Not since Europeans settled here has that much snow fallen here (and very little has melted up til now). :S

Thanks June and am sending best wishes to you as well! My childhood home up on the plains and it had a spring under it (most of the time we were happily unaware of it until a bad snowfall year came around). My brother lives there now and I reminded him to make sure his sump pump is working. Sump pumps are one of the bestest flood prevention inventions out there (my parents got theirs after I woke up to a foot of water in my basement bedroom back in '74).

We cleared all snow off our garage and have pushed back all near the house...melt coming down the hill is a worry but more so for the house beside us (their basement and yard has flooded in the past) and the house across the street has already had to empty their garage due to melt coming down the hill.

Tensions are now high here re whether our river will have an ice jam. My house is safe from the river (though one co-worker's isn't), should be safe from melt coming down the hill (I hope) and we all worry about the possible flood and how far it will spread into our downtown. A lot of unknowns this year....we were very dry going into fall but we have more snow than ever before so.....

Please keep us posted on your situation, Lilypon! Looking on the positive side, your garden should look good this year after having such a deep protective winter blanket and then receiving extra spring moisture. Cool spring temperatures here meant that the snow lay longer, and it saved my little Erica carnea bush from getting wind-burned.

I feel for you with risks of spring floods.
Here things are warming up so finally can work out in the garden.
Lots to do!

I think summer is here. By lunchtime it was 22C, and 33C in the greenhouse. Panic stations! Potted culinary sage and mint, a planter filled with dwarf hostas, and a containerized Deutzia are now outside the greenhouse. They'll probably need to go back in, as frost is still possible here for the next four weeks.

The first daffodil has bloomed, and it's 'Gigantic Star', which is neither gigantic nor stellar, just a chunky yellow trumpet, on short, stout stems. In the shade, Hepatica nobilis is blooming. The pic is from last year, when it had some surviving leaves. This spring, there are only flowers. The first primula to bloom is an unnamed seedling that appeared in a sowing of Thlaspi seeds from the local rock garden society. It survives (barely) in the shade of a rock in my otherwise sunny gravel garden.

It is nice to see spring there.
It would be nice here too---but
the wind is making it so I do not want to be out there.

Finally got some crocuses blooming in Ottawa about a week ago. I had about a zillion of them but they are fading fast. Now have the earliest of my little tulips, the pulmonaria, and scilla blooming. No daffs yet or other tulips, though I have a lot of new tulips that I'm looking forward to. Was in Vancouver last weekend and I guess things are delayed there as well, but the cherry blossoms and tulips were lovely.

Pics aren't too exciting but this is our SIGN OF SPRING!!! :D :D :D

She's broken, moving fast and rising... I don't think we will have an ice jam though :D (ice had rotted more than usual this year). Larger chunks are under water but no where near as thick as I've seen other years. Police blocked people from entering the park shortly before we left.

The crest should come around the middle of this week. We were so very lucky to have a number of very warm days prior to the melt water reaching us. Usually the sound of the ice breaking is like hearing dynamite going off and the chunks are big and thick. Not so this year.

That's encouraging news, Lilypon! I hope it all keeps on flowing, with no ice dams, and no floods. Let us know how it goes.

There was more heat here today, although not quite so summery as yesterday (and it's raining now). Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) has begun blooming. When I moved into this house, the foundation planting was a mess of weeds and invasive grasses. I dosed the the flowerbeds with Roundup, waited until everything turned brown, and then dug the ground over, before planting anything. I did not plant bloodroot, so I was very surprised when it popped up next spring! In the pic, the brown knobby things are the flower spikes of Pachysandra procumbens, which I unwittingly planted on top of the bloodroot.

ViolaAnn, what little species tulips do you grow? I've planted a few, but they haven't done well - they gradually get fewer and disappear, despite being in full sun and good drainage. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong!

Caroline, do you have any more spring flowers to report?

June - I have some little yellow ones that I've had for decades. Someone identified them for me a number of years ago, but I don't remember. Those aren't blooming yet, but it won't be too long. For the others, I really have no idea. But I did take some pics today. I'll download them tomorrow and post and will also try to get an ID on them. I think I've had them for about a decade or more and they have multiplied.

I can barely see red in some of the tulip leaves.

What is up in the garden? SNOW! that is up in the garden!
So I went to the tire store and got calibrochoa, lobelia, fan flower and bacopa
basket stuffers.

Here are those little tulips. They always start blooming before the crocuses are finished. I've also got increasing mats of scilla which tide the garden over from crocuses to daffs and tulips. I DO have one daffodil blooming in a warmer microclimate in the garden. Crocuses are largely finished in front of my house though I have a few left in cooler spots.

Those are pretty----did they have a name?-----the dwarf tulips?

According to the thread in the plant ID forum, they are one variety of Tulipa kaufmanniana. Maybe the variety called Shakespeare.

I'll watch for them in the fall when bulbs come to the garden centers.

Hang in there, Caroline, the snow will give up and go away soon!

Wow, ViolaAnn, you have a lot of beautiful bulbs - and you have planted them very effectively. I only buy small quantities of bulbs, then I dig one hole per variety and they all go in close together. I end up with little blobs of colour. I do like to see carpets of bulbs, though. At the public garden where I worked (ten years ago), an army of gardeners went out every fall and planted bulbs from sun-up to sun-down, rain or shine, and the result in spring was spectacular. However, from where I sat in the administrative office, the immediate result was that I received many reports of repetetive motion injuries to the bulb planters' knees, wrists, etc. I hope you didn't hurt yourself planting your bulbs.

Tulips are good herbivore fodder here. Since hope springs eternal, I planted T. greggii 'Fire of Love' , which has incredible striped leaves - and every leaf got eaten every year, until it finally gave up. The rabbits seem to like tulips more if they are expensive or unusual varieties.

Today......

Needless to say the water level province wide is also *up* : http://roadinfo.telenium.ca/sk/map/map03.html The flashing areas labelled as *construction* with orange pilons is where flooding is occurring.



This message was edited Apr 30, 2013 7:46 AM

Lilypon - how disheartening. I hope you see spring soon, but not TOO soon with all that snow to melt.

June - some of those crocuses have been there for 40 years. I rarely buy new ones - just dig up the clumps that are getting really overcrowded and divide them into the spots where I don't have crocuses. They multiply rapidly. I have a FEW smaller species crocuses which just got lost in the mass of big saucy ones; so I ended up digging them out and massing them in one location, but I didn't get a picture this year. They were at their best while we were in Vancouver last week.

As far as tulips, most of mine seem to disappear after a few years, but this little one has been there maybe a decade and continues to do well. I have a few other little ones, but this one is doing the best. Have quite a few NEW tulips this year, but most of them are barely above ground. I tend to buy new ones only every few years because at planting time I'm never sure where I still have good tulips - so I wait until most have died out.

Oh yes, the scilla is almost a weed. Multiplies very rapidly once established. They started as a freebie courtesy of the squirrels. And when I actually bought some, the squirrels dug most of them up and moved them around. But once established, I think they overwhelm those rodents.

Good grief, Lilypon! Not a good day to go for a drive, then. Lovely pics, though!

ViolaAnn, I've never gardened in the same place for more than 11 years, so I don't know if any of my bulb plantings have lasted for 40!

Do you recall how at the beginning of 'The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' Arthur Dent looks out of his window, sees a bulldozer, thinks "Yellow", goes back to doing what he was doing, and a few minutes later runs out of the house to throw himself on the ground? I had a "yellow" moment this morning, but it was a tulip, and I was on the ground with my camera. I had forgotten all about Tulip urumiensis, which has been languishing underneath an overgrown Genista 'Lemon Spreader' for the last year or so. Well, the deer ate the Genista this winter, and I can see the tulip now.

Those yellow tulips look a bit like the yellow ones I have. Short and long-lasting. Again, I bought them many years ago from a bulb catalogue. I have them in several parts of my yard and they aren't blooming yet, but won't be too late. BTW, they produce seeds to and they seem to come true though they take several years to reach blooming size.

ViolaAnn, you're right about the tulips seeding themselves. The surrounding area is sprouting similar leaves. Too bad I'll have to dig them up later. The outer edge of my gravel garden/rock garden has been invaded by grasses and weeds and I need to take it apart, clean it, and replant it.

The second "yellow" moment of yesterday was seeing the first dandelion flower in the lawn. Actually, calling it a lawn is a bit of a stretch since it's more weeds than grass. DH mows it, and last year he managed to get the weeds to flower in stripes.

Yes, things are coming along here.
Might even be able to start hardening the tomato plants.
My windows are full of plants needing more sun.

That's great news, Caroline! Honestly, I wish spring had arrived more slowly here. It got very warm very quickly, and the spring bulbs have rushed into flower, and then quickly wilted. The daffodils will be over in a matter of days if this heat keeps up - and it is forecast to do so.

The "what's up" for today is more of a "what's in the air". The bugs are starting to get troublesome. I got my first blackfly bite of the season while I was removing dandelions from the flowerbeds. Tree pollen is also coating everything and making my sinuses ache. I'm starting to wish for some rain. Are gardeners ever satisfied with the weather?

Well, it's been lovely the last couple of days in Ottawa. Haven't had much time to get into the garden today, but hope to tomorrow. Every day there are more things blooming.

Daffodils - a couple of varieties
A Fritillaria
A couple varieties of early tulips - I've never kept track of the names but the last one is, I think like yours above. I've got only a few in the front yard. Most are in the back yard and won't bloom for awhile.

More - Pulmonaria is blooming both blue and white. Nice at this time of year but a real weed. I've got several of the blue plants.

I also have some ground cover blooming in the back yard - don't have a picture. Trillium won't be long.

And today, my garden grew an arbour. Actually, I used to have an overgrown mock-orange in this location. Dug it out a few years ago and have had problems with the hostas in this bed getting sunburnt ever since. It's an east facing wall and previously they had done well here. I didn't think the bush was a factor since it was north of the hostas, but the adjacent house - about 10 feet away also has white aluminum siding on their garage wall. I think the sun bouncing back and forth between the two houses intensified the sun's rays. I'll stain the arbor tomorrow and I'll get some Clematis to grow at the sides of it. Am hoping that it will do the trick.

There's someone VERY handy at my church. And my church just underwent a 2.2 million $ reconstruction project that was closer to 3 million $ when finished because of problems that were found. We have debt. I approached this person about building me the arbor and what I pay him above and beyond his costs, going to the revitalization fund - his donation so he gets the tax receipt. He thought it was a great idea and voila!

I just read back in the thread. I've also started quite a few seeds. Some hostas in January which are doing well and are now outside. And inside, I started peppers in early April. Sowed my tomatoes and eggplant just before we went to Vancouver on April 18 and they were starting to germinate when we returned 5 days later. They are all under lights, but I'm thinking about potting them up in deeper pots and starting to harden them off. And just last week I started some Zinnias which germinated in about 2 days, some Lavatera which are now beginning to germinate, some 4 O'clocks - not yet germinated, some Balsam which has germinated, some zucchini - half germinated and some Nicotiana - not yet germinate.

I am potting things up too.
The Dollarama stores had "kitty litter" pans which will hold 12 of the
tomatoe plants in party cups.
Looks like good weather here so I can start hardening them outside.

Caroline, I'm glad to learn I'm not the only person who uses kitty litter pans (minus the litter) as trays for pots!

Lovely flower pics, ViolaAnn, and your arbour looks fantastic. You should ask your carpenter to build you a matching garden seat! I too have some of those old, invasive pulmonarias. They were in the garden when I took it over, but doing poorly because they had been planted in full sun. I considerately moved them into the shade, and now they are doing better than I need them to.