We’re expecting a nice day in Seattle today, so I will write some of my weekend plans here quickly  as I enjoy coffee and a kale smoothie.  It seems likely there won’t be any blogging time later in this busy weekend, but I’d need to be working in the garden and greenhouse, not writing about it!

My goals for the weekend:

• Clean up the raspberry bed at the front of the orchard garden;  just remove the old canes and cut back the tops of the remaining canes if needed and fertilize
• Prune back the butterfly bushes on the side of the orchard bed
• Fertilize the orchard trees/bushes/vines
• Collect all the hardy plants from the greenhouse and plant/move them outside–ferns to the Doug fir bed and other plants to pot shelves or garden, as appropriate;  need to free up space for the seedlings
• Transplant seedlings, especially the campanulas and lathyrus
• Organize the greenhouse better and get all the seedling trays up on top shelves where they’ll get better light
• Weed the bed in front of the greenhouse  and the raised herb bed there
• Trim back the Tuscan kale plants to get the flowers off them and force new, big leaves
• Move some of the excess yard waste into the empty yard waste containers for pick-up on Thursday

Regarding the Doug fir bed that I cleaned out last weekend, I did order some plants to fill it this week.  An Ebay seller had a mystery fern pack, so I ordered those, along with some Dutchman’s Breeches and Virginia Bluebells.  I have found it tough to get many plants established in this bed (except the thug geranium), but I’ll make sure to work some compost and organic fertilizer in and hopefully that will help.

Off to get it done–let’s see if I’m over ambitious!

 

 

 

 

This weekend has been perfect for some garden work–some sun, some clouds, some rain.

I spent four days up at the cabin in Tonasket.  We had wind and sun and then a bit of a snow storm, so it gave me ample time to do some garden planning and even calendar some dates for growing and planting.

For this year, I plan to work on getting the grass out of the orchard garden and preparing it for planting perennials next spring.  I also plan to rework the Douglas fir bed, removing the weedy plants and replacing them with more structure and more special shrubs and perennials.

Yesterday, I cleaned out the bed that holds the Beauty Plum and the espaliered Asian pear against the east-facing fence in the orchard garden.

This bed is troubled by three nasty weeds:  a creeping grass that gets in from the lawn, buttercups and the insidious bindweed.  I spent the day pulling and turning under buttercups.

I was wondering how it is possible that plants that evolved in other places seem so much better adapted to our area than native plants that evolved here?  For example, how is it that the blackberries, scotch broom, buttercups, dandelions and mulleins have made themselves so very at home here?

The bed is so badly infested with all of these weeds–the only recourse will be to put down landscape cloth and mulch.  That has become my plan for this entire garden to kill both weeds and grass.  I will cover everything this spring with landscape cloth and then cover with a fertile soil amendment and cover that with a bark mulch.

Here is what the buttercups looked like–they apparently grew all winter long: 

I was able to do a temporary clean up and plant 48 wallflowers in this bed, along with three of the Clematis columbiana that I grew from seed two years ago.

You can see the plum and Asian pear trees along the fence, with a bleeding heart blooming and the remainder of a hellebore in the background.  Closer to the camera, there is a penstemon and three groups of Amaryllis belladonna–the two bigger ones are pink and the third is white.  And none of them has ever bloomed.  The wallflowers are planted all around them.

Here are the little wallflowers with the white Amaryllis.  These are English wallflowers and should add a big burst of color in early summer.

Here is the Asian pear–from Raintree.  It has quite a few flowers, but there were no bees around it.  I took a paintbrush to it today, but in the rain, I doubt if it did much good.  I will hope for more natural pollinizing in the coming week or so.

Here is the bleeding heart that came from sister Cate’s garden last year.  It is doing well.  Another gold-leaved form is doing less well–but it might just be a late starter.

I cleaned up the streptocarpus in the greenhouse yesterday, as well.  There are about a dozen of them that are already growing strong thanks to all the sunny days heating up the greenhouse.  Normally, I would top dress them, but for now I just cleaned off old leaves and flower stems and fertilized them with a shot of compost tea.  I’ll give them topdressing a bit later in the season.

Today I planted seeds in the tray that was emptied when I planted out the wallflowers.  The seeds were cucumbers, Oenothera pallida, zinnias, nemesia, fireweed, and eupatorium.  I also planted four 4″ pots with bachelor buttons seeds, which should be ready to plant out in the garden in six weeks or so.

Many of the other seeds are already growing and they aren’t getting enough light on the floor of the greenhouse.  I need to relocate some of the winter growing bulbs on the sunny side of the greenhouse and replace them with the seedling trays–I will work on that next weekend.

The greenhouse is full of color right now, especially the Clivia miniata hybrids that are coming into flower.  Here are some photos of the ones opened already:

 There are slight variations among all the flowers that you can see if you look closely. 

Another flower I can count on in the greenhouse is my favorite Pelargonium (geranium)–Pelargonium papilionaceum.

This large shrub blooms around the same time as the Clivia plants and provides an interesting contrast in the greenhouse.

Each flower is gloriously intricate, and the orange pollen sets them off perfectly.  They will set seeds and the seeds do grow–I’ve had some start on purpose and on accident in greenhouse pots.  The flower season is about a month, but they continue to be showy because of their size and large leaves that smell great when brushed against or crushed.

A few more greenhouse bloomers on the first day of spring:

Pleione formosana has one huge orchid flower on a diminutive plant.  I’m excited that it is blooming, as it didn’t last year, despite prodigious growth.

Here is a seedling of Freesia laxa blooming still in its seed pot.  This is a great color improvement over the other, redder version I have (from Edelweiss at the NW Flower and Garden Show.  These are supposedly borderline hardy, so I will try moving some outside this spring.

The pitcher plant flowers are rising rapidly–can’t wait to see what they look like!

Below are some photos of the little rhododendron I have in a pot in the driveway.  It struggled somehow to keep its flowers opened and clean, but they are stunning when they do open, and there are more coming.  I need to move this beauty into the ground.

While at the cabin, I determined to rework the circle bed around the Douglas fir tree in the front yard.  To that end, today I removed all of one species of hardy geranium that had taken the concept of thug to a level even the buttercups would envy.  I had planted them on purpose in this bed, as they are attractive, especially in spring when they first leaf out and when the pink flowers open.  Not only do they spread by rhizomes, but they seed themselves EVERYWHERE.  So, they have to go.  I pulled them from the Douglas fir bed today and will eradicate them from other areas in the coming weeks.  I am not naïve enough to believe that this battle is won.  It is unlikely that I’ve gotten every rhizome and there are thousands of seeds just waiting their chance, but I consider it a start.  If I’m diligent, I should be able to keep them out of the yard from now on.

Here is the overly zealous geranium–possibly maculatum?  It has fresh leaves now, but fades quickly when things dry out and its propensity for proliferation has made it enemy number one in 2015.

Here is the bed after I cleared all the rogue geraniums out.  Lots of room for new plants!

Fortunately, the soil under the huge Douglas fir tree is dry and light, so it wasn’t too terrible pulling 2000 or so geranium plants.

And here is the huge pile of casualties, and this does not include the full yard waste container!

Today was another perfect day–temps in the 60’s and bright sun all day.  It is impossible to believe that any real winter weather might befall us after these last few weeks of warm and calm.  However, nights are still chilly and we had frost last week here, so that was a useful reminder to not get ahead of myself in planting and fertilizing.

I performed a few chores today–dug around the two columnar apple trees in the orchard garden (Scarlet Sentinel and North Pole) and the dwarf cherry (Glacier).  The plum tree is in bloom, but only a few flowers–doubt if any fruit will set.  There are bees around, but I’m not sure they are finding the flowers I want them to find.  They seem obsessed with finding water, instead.

Not a great photo, but these are all the flowers this Beauty plum has.

The bed that this plum and the grafted, espalier Asian pear occupy is completely filled with crab grass, buttercups and bindweed.  The bindweed isn’t up yet, so I’ll dig it out as best I can.  I did tackle some of the buttercups today and will tackle even more at a later date.  I plan to bed out a bunch of the English wallflower seedlings in this bed and then cover the ground with very aggressive groundcovers to keep the weeds down.

Other sights from the garden, pots and greenhouse:

This is the winter hazel (corylopsis) that is blooming next to the forsythia.  I love the soft yellow and the grace of the flowers.  The branching pattern is very graceful, too, and excellent for flower arrangements.  Looking up, you can see the details of the flowers and the graceful zigzag of the stems.

The leaves, once they unfurl, will be striking, as well–they resemble hazel leaves, but more graceful and with touches of red.

I’m not sure I would plant the two early yellow bloomers together if planning the garden again, but I do find the combination works.

Amazingly, three weeks after the first flowers burst open, the forsythia continues to impress.  It appears to be an excellent cultivar.  I would normally prune it back right after flowering, but it is so striking and such a graceful, natural shape that I will let it be for one more year.

This is the camellia that was here in the yard in 1995 when we moved in.  I pruned it once to make it more of a tree and less of a shrub, and I think it could use that treatment again.  The flowers are lovely, but we don’t usually get to enjoy many pristine ones, as the rain ruins them.  Something is bothering this old shrub, as it has dropped a bunch of leaves for no apparent reason.  I’ll keep an eye on it.  The flowers don’t appear affected, and there are plenty of them.

There are a few flowers open on the bigroot geraniums (geranium macrorrhizum)already. Again, not a great picture.  It can be easy to overlook the individual beauty of these flowers, as typically they bloom in clusters all over the garden. When there are just a few of them, they beg closer inspection.  This is one of my favorite ground covers–seems to like my clay here.

Here is an anemone blanda blooming in a clay pot on the shelves outside the greenhouse.  It was lovely in the sun today.  I also saw the blue variety (really a lavender blue) in one yard en masse on my run today and they were impressive.  I might try them in the ground again, as they obviously can work nicely in this area.

 

This interesting delicate blue hyacinth is impressive in form and fragrance.  It came in a mix, so I’ll have to see if I can figure out which cultivar it is to order some for next year.  Normally, my instinct is to dismiss flowers that have been so gaudily hybridized, but the giant flower spikes of hyacinths are an exception for me.  They retain grace in the individual petals/florets, and I just love the scent.

I was gifted with three hybrid pitcher plants last year that I’ve kept in a tray in the greenhouse.  I wasn’t sure I was meeting their needs, but today I noticed that one of the Sarracenias has a couple of flower spikes coming on.  The flowers of these unusual plants are even more impressive to me than the miraculous leaves–it should be fun to watch their progress.

 

 

 

One of my favorite seedling clivias, this one is called Starlight of Buddha and features leaves that are variegated in broad bands.  This plant is at least six years old and is flowering for the first time this year.  It is very compact and gorgeous, and mostly carefree, like all clivias.

I forced this tulip mix in the produce drawer of the fridge.  Most of the flowers are purple, but this light yellow one caught my eye in the windowsill yesterday, glowing in the sunlight.  These smaller species tulips have not been ideal as forced flowers–the show isn’t particularly “showy”.  Yet the individual flowers are exquisite.

 

Here is a current photo of the Veltheimia in the greenhouse.  The leaves are lovely, undulating and shiny.  The plant to the left in the photo  is a giant seedling Chlorophytum krookianum.  Closely related to the common spider plant houseplant, I’m hoping to get flowers from this giant in the next year or two.

Honestly, it seems more like summer than winter!  We’ve had so many bright, sunny days in a row, I’m not sure what to make of all of the blue sky.  Today was another planting, organizing day, with some mowing and pruning  thrown in for good measure.

I started by planting a flat of seeds–sand verbena (abronia), verbena rigida, agastache, peach leaved bellflowers, calendulas, Shirley poppies, prickly poppies (argemone) and others.

Once the seeds were in, I moved onto some cuttings–I took a total of 18 cuttings, 6 of each kind of clematis in the garden.  I’ve had success with these early spring cuttings in the past, so thought I’d try it again.  I just cut some branches from the clematis vines that were showing bud growth, trimmed each growing bud down with just a bit of vine, dipped them in hormone powder and stuck them in some good potting mix and watered well.  Here’s what the tray looked like:

 

The greenhouse had to be reorganized in order to allow for what I am hoping will be a spectacular clivia show in the next few weeks.  This was the perfect day to pull everything from the greenhouse floor and rearrange with the clivias front and center.  It was intensely fun digging through the plants and discovering all the clivia spikes.  I counted a total of 20 spikes in all, which is probably twice as many bloom spikes as I’ve ever had in previous years.  Many more of the seedlings, including the variegated ones and the Light of Buddha seedling that I’ve had for many years, are finally blooming size.

And here is the fully rearranged greenhouse with all of the spiking clivias front and center:

Here are some blooming things around the greenhouse and garden:

 

 

How is it possible that the lawn needed to be mowed at the end of February?!  Usually, I get to wait until the end of March, but I should have mowed it this past weekend and decided to do other chores with my limited time, instead.

I pruned the heck out of a wild rose at the end of the driveway.  Grown from an arboretum seed, this rose is very vigorous and should have been planted a little farther into the yard, away from the driveway and the street.  Inevitably, it grows long canes that reach out and scratch cars and visitors alike.  I cut it way back to the main woody canes–about 4′ at the tallest.  It will spring back to life and get to 10+ feet again by the end of summer.  This rose gets elegant light pink, single flowers, and is festooned with elongated, scarlet hips all winter long–festive for holiday decorating and just adding lovely color to the garden in the gray months.

I planted the seedling sweet peas out near the berry trellises on Sunday, too.  I’m hopeful the slugs will leave them alone and the cold weather won’t bother them.  They were healthy starts and I didn’t want them to get pot bound, as that tends to slow them down or stop them growing altogether.  My hope is that the peas will bloom early and long and attract pollinators to the berry flowers as they appear, increasing the crops and adding interest and fragrance to that area of the garden.

I checked out the seed flats and the only noticeable growth is with the Lathyrus mix that I planted several weeks ago.  About nine different seedlings were showing through the soil.  I’ve left the wallflower seedlings out to harden off and they seem no worse for wear.  Likely, they will find a place in the garden next weekend.

In the greenhouse, the clivias are starting to spike, which means that I really need to reorganize next weekend and move these bold plants out where I can make sure they get watered and where their lovely flowers can be enjoyed.

I have started dozens of these amaryllis relatives from seed and many of them have never bloomed before, so I’m excited to see the colors and flower shapes.

Other plants that are getting flowers are the masdevallia orchids.  I divided one plant into four last year and all of them are healthy and setting flowers.  The flowers look like this:

The Veltheimia in the greenhouse is blooming, as well, all the way at the far end that I can only reach with great effort, moving some of the winter-stored plants out of the way.

I also spent some time tearing ivy off of the giant Douglas fir tree in the yard.  I like having ivy in the bed around the tree–it covers and drapes well.  But you have to manage it, or the tree will get devoured and the ivy will bloom and set seed, which isn’t fair to nature or neighbor.

I finished the Chatto/Lloyd gardening letter book I was reading.  It had a few good pieces of advice and mostly was inspiring in hearing older gardeners who had loved gardening their whole lives and their passion for it didn’t fade but got stronger.

My newest garden read, and one that I’m extremely excited about is local author Ann Lovejoy’s “Handbook of Northwest Gardening”.    So far, this book appears to be an extremely sensible and intelligent planning guide for transforming a house lot into a useful, beautiful garden space.  I like the way Ms. Lovejoy spells out the steps and the problem-solving techniques.  It doesn’t hurt that the book deals very specifically with the challenge I’m facing–recreating a garden from the lawn and old shrubs that exist here in my yard.

So, off to read more about what I might someday get to do when time and finances allow!

The glorious, amazing spring weather continues and I had the pleasure of visiting West Seattle yesterday and wandering around with my brother.  The plants there are even more advanced than here in north Seattle, thanks to the warming effects of the nearby Puget Sound.

Saucer magnolias against the blue sky.

Most books say that sunny days are bad for photography, and I certainly see the challenge.  But the bluest skies are irresistible!

Stunning saucer magnolia in full bloom and closer and closer up.

 
This rich purple magnolia was in someone’s yard and I couldn’t reach it, but the camera was able to capture some of the beautiful color.

I have a love/hate relationship with bergenias.  I hate the way the leaves get mangled by winter and sometimes just leave a mess.  But how can I not love the flowers?  West Seattle certainly seems to suit these plants better than my area, where they just look disastrous this year.

Early rhododendrons are everywhere, including the lovely white one above.

 

These delicate pink bells on a dwarf rhodie shrub were lovely to see.

This is a fragrant viburnum, delicate scent and lovely flowers on a rambunctious shrub.

Rosemary was blooming remarkably well in the balmy weather, and the flowers looked particularly stunning against this brick wall.

 

The camellias were amazing around my brother’s neighborhood…and the flowers were pristine because of the dry weather.  Above is a gallery of some of them.

Red flowering currants in full bloom.

This gorgeous plum tree was showing off in the pea-patch garden in which my brother is a member.

This pasque flower was blooming brightly in the West Seattle Nursery.

This beautiful flower was opening in a 4″ pot at West Seattle nursery–a ginger of some sort.

Daphne, smelling like heaven and lovely, too.

A daffodil opening in the brilliant sun.

This pachysandra has an interesting bloom–not showy like most of the other flowers in this gallery, but with its own lovely charm.

Brilliant crocus shining through sedums.