Rob's plants
home garden plants wildlife seed photos
plant sale journal topics plantlinks fun guestbook

Garden journal entry

 

Leibnitzia anandria
April 14, 2013. It's been a busy weekend, with every last bit of daylight spent outside. Not all gardening – I got a nice long bike ride in on Saturday morning, while the sun and wind dried out the soil soaked by Friday's downpours, and this afternoon was a prime example of the suburban dance, Amy and I rushing back and forth to get all three kids to their soccer games. But the rest of the sunlit hours I was out in the garden, evaluating what had and hadn't survived the previous season, digging up plants for the sale, finding new homes for some others – and once in a while actually paying attention to what the already-installed plants in the garden were doing. Finally, after a few warm days last week, most of the early- and mid-spring risers have poked up their heads, many displaying great promise for the season to come. I was surprised to find a couple of Leibnitz daisies in the rock garden this morning, because I thought they hadn't survived last summer; then I was even more surprised to find one of them blooming in its lowly way in the evening. They are sneaky that way: they quickly come into bloom in early spring, and then hide their sexual parts for a while; in late summer, they send up fully formed seedheads, on a new set of stalks. At least, that's how I think they do it – I tend to lose track of them in between the flowering and seeding stages.
With this weekend's harvest, I'm at about 140 varieties potted up for the sale. Quantities per variety are lower than previous years, but with another couple weeks left to add a few more species, the selection should be almost as good as in years past. To entice the plantaholics among my customers, I've added a few choice new varieties: I decided to put one of my prized four-year-old Paeonia ostii in the sale, along with a huge Japanese beautyberry (which takes up the biggest pot I could find in the shed) and some fine hellebore divisions. Many of the new ones will be smaller-growing plants, since I've grown so many rock garden plants in recent years, from the incredible NARGS seed exchanges.
I'll need every waking non-working hour between now and mid-May to finish up sale preparations, work on getting all the new seedlings planted, and otherwise get the garden ready for the new season. And I'm looking forward to being pleasantly tired every night.


Your name

Your comments

home garden plants wildlife seed plant sale topics guestbook journal plantlinks

Last modified: September 09, 2009
Contact me