The eves are dripping, snow is sliding from the roof and you can almost imagine green grass, pansies and preparing the soil for gardening. Smell the fresh brown soil. Really, it will come. In the meantime it is nice to enjoy a conversation about gardening with an old friend, Jeanne, as a glance out the window from time to time shows a six-foot-high snowbank sitting on the lawn.
Jeanne said a friend gave her a beautiful pot of daffodils this week, which she set right on her kitchen table. She is enjoying her amaryllis right now, too. She has a few different colors and this year she ordered some white ones to try. Jeanne said that at one time her “sister had 50 amaryllis blooming all through her home.” If you have tried amaryllis you know how hard it is to plan to have it bloom at a certain time, like Christmas. Jeanne said that there are quite a few variables that figure in if you want them to bloom at a certain time. The temperature, sunlight and humidity are a few things to consider when trying to get them to blossom.
Jeanne does not worry about when the amaryllis will bloom. She plants hers outside after danger of frost in the spring and then they just grow and get good leaves in her raised beds over the summer. Jeanne warned, “They do seem to attract slugs.” In the fall she pulls them and dries them out and places them in open plastic grocery bags, hanging them up in her cool cellar until January or February. At that time she removes them and repots them. Jeanne noted that she prefers heavier pots than the ones that the bulbs are sold with in stores. She prefers south-facing windows for the amaryllis, Christmas cactus and geraniums as well.
Jeanne and her husband, who are both retired, are planning to start tomatoes, peppers, petunias, coleus, pansy and geraniums in the house soon and then they will move them to the greenhouse. She orders from several different seed companies such as Burpee, Johnny’s and Fedco. Burpee is where she likes to get her tomato seeds as they have the varieties that she is looking for. But she has heard about a paste tomato, Grandma Mary’s, that Fedco sells that she might try this year. Other varieties that they usually plant are: Big Boy, Early Girl and Roma: all of the bush type.
“I try something different every year,” Jeanne said. This year she is trying a pelleted petunia that has fused two colors. The particular one that she is trying will have some purple and some lime flowers all on the same plant. There were only five pellets per package and they recommend just one pellet per pod. Last year she tried to grow bags of spinach, kale and lettuce, which gave them early salad makings. Another fun one was Job’s Tears. They have seed pods that one of her granddaughters strung into a necklace. One problem with them was that they had very deep roots which were difficult to remove. Norman (Jeanne’s husband) said, “I don’t think you should grow those again.”
Nicotina, a member of the night shade family related to tobacco, is another plant Jeanne has tried. But she found it to be invasive. She recommends very strongly against growing Strawberry spinach. She said, “It tasted all right. But it had small berries that seeded everywhere.”
One year they had a lot of chipmunks living in their barn, which got into their corn seeds. That summer they had corn springing up in the day lilies and all over the place. Unfortunately it wasn’t the sweet corn variety.
They planted Chinese lanterns next to the driveway one year. “It got crowded out by bamboo (Japanese Knotweed),” Jeanne said. According to the “Peterson’s Field Guide: Edible Wild Plants,” Japanese knotweed is edible and good in stir-fries. Jeanne contemplated how the bamboo might have been started. “My aunt’s house had quite a lot around the outhouse out back.” She wondered if they had been started that way, as they do make a pretty good and quick screen. That sounds like a possibility, but probably the only way to make them scarce is to start eating them.
It was nice to have a reprieve from the winter weather as we head back into a cold spell. It is just a little reminder that we need to hold on and be patient. Spring will come.
