Spring

Spring arrived late to my mind and my garden, but last week after giving into the doubt of my gardening skills, Nature gave me the smallest of gifts: three tiny snowdrops growing under a 'Romeo' cherry and one beside a stepping stone.

Out of the dozens of bulbs I planted last fall I am glad at least to have these few tiny plants: like rare pearls thrown up from the waves of chinook winds. They are growing in their blooms and one is yet to emerge fully from the soil, but I'm hoping this is the start of a minute spring family and I'm protecting them like gold!

This winter I purchased two bird feeders to attract winged visitors; however, the visitors that ate the most and ended up staying were two squirrels: one black, one grey. When I took the feeders down in exasperation, they decided to look for food elsewhere. Each day I would come home to little potholes dug all over the garden.

Hence, the red specks you see on the soil here and there and even dusted on some of the greenery: cayenne pepper. On top of the snowdrops I have placed dessicated evergreen boughs: prickly but natural cages to keep the squirrels away.

The last few days I'm finally feeling the urgency of garden work that this season brings. I've been checking on things to see what has survived and today after seeing spinach up yesterday, I planted more 'King of Denmark,' West Coast Seeds' Stir Fry blend and Hakurei turnips. I covered all of this with row covers held down with bricks. This will also protect my strawberries and the eight garlic sprouts I counted today. (The next two nights' temperature forecasts are -6 and -7ºC. We also had snow today and more is anticipated tonight.)

The first bulb of garlic to break through the soil. The others are much smaller.

I planted these seeds on March 30 and yesterday I pulled one out before realizing it was actually a spinach seedling.
4 out of 5 seeds have germinated in this patch. The other two patches: 2/3 and 2/5.

These two raised beds will be dedicated to food production experimentation. Bottom is strawberries and spinach so far;
the top bed is garlic, stir fry mesclun mix and hakurei turnips. Future seeds will include carrots and radishes.

I also was late in getting peas in. Yesterday I purchased two marvelous, simply designed wire obelisks (and slammed my finger between the two of them while taking them out of my car – certain that I would be stuck on our front lawn for hours with a purple finger – luckily my husband in shining sock feet rescued me and although I felt light headed with pain, my finger is absolutely fine. Hurt like hell, but wow: fingers are resilient!)

So this morning I soaked peas for 5 hours and because I couldn't find last years' inoculant, experimented with putting worm compost in the bottom of the planting holes. I'm hoping there's at least a little rhizobium bacteria in there. I top dressed lightly with Sea Soil and covered the whole thing with a sprinkling of cayenne and another row cover.

Soaked peas and vermicompost. I planted West Coast Seeds' Sugar Ann at the bottom of each vertical bar
and Little Marvel in the centre and the rest of the circumference of the obelisk.
Even though these supposedly don't need staking, I've been advised differently.

 Other than that, it has been just nice to find daily (or sometimes even hourly) changes in the garden. Here are some of my new additions last year that have made a good start so far:

Showy Jacob's Ladder from Wild About Flowers.

Gentian 'Blue Cross' from Rundle Wood Gardens.

Another gentian I rescued from a Canadian Tire end of season sale.

Euphorbia 'Bonfire.' Two out of three survived so far.

Cranesbill 'Ballerina.' Also two out of three survived so far.

And some of my veterans. The iris look a little worse for wear but there is new growth and I'm certain as the weather warms up, they will continue to be a work horse as in previous years. Prairie crocus is unfurling as well.

 

And this post's finale:

Today's post sponsored by the Dairy Industry... and snow

I'm feeling surprisingly upbeat today, if not yet fully back to personal creative productivity. It's currently fluctuating between tiny biting ice pellets and snow with a temperature of -2ºC. However, the snow warning they are forecasting for Calgary has been light so far, so what better gardening activity to partake in than more winter sowing!

While picking up some groceries earlier this week, I spotted a package of Blue Fescue (Festuca  glauca 'Select') on the McKenzie seed rack. Last year I played in my mind with the idea of getting some of this grass, as it would echo the colour of our *lovely* vinyl siding and it would also provide some winter interest. However, I recall not wanting to justify the expense of buying potted perennials in case I didn't like the effect. 

For $2.99 and the cost of soil, I can experiment with growing my own. I've saved 6 seeds to sow under lights in the next week and I potted the rest of the seeds up in a 2L empty milk jug. Ideally, I would use a 4L jug, but we don't drink that much milk and it will be good to see if the smaller container makes any appreciable difference.

I was taken aback that there were only 24 seeds and recalled others complain that some companies are not very generous with the amount of product they include in their packages. Still, even if I only get two or three plants out of it, I'm still ahead substantially and if none germinate and/or survive, I'm not out by much.

After finishing, I placed the jug outside with the huddle of others, none of which have so far shown any signs of life. I was thinking the last couple weeks that some kind of karmic obstacle has put an end to my modest gardening successes, but then I've heard several reports that the growing season seems to be getting a late start in most places, so I won't give up hope yet.

A huddle of jugs.

Today I also re-potted six little Red Feathers (Echium amoenum) seedlings that I started on March 25. I bought the seeds from the Calgary Zoo's Botanical Gardens booth at Calgary's Seedy Saturday. Twelve seeds were sown under lights and the rest of the package was winter sowed. I used a wooden pot maker my Dad had made me along with brown craft paper to make the initial pots for my indoor seeding. Unfortunately, the paper was getting mouldy and I didn't think that would be very good for the health of the plants.

So, I used a trick of my Mom's and another cast off from dairy consumption: little yogurt containers. We don't usually buy yogurt this way, but my parents were visiting a couple of weeks ago and I bought them as my Mom likes to have this size for breakfast (and I realized: for plant seedlings after). Just poke some holes in the bottom, wash them well and rinse with a bleach/water solution and plant up. Voilà!

Growing green stuff under lights has been a new venture for me this year, but I'm glad I bought the little set-up: it has definitely provided some spring-ness to this never ending winter weather we've been having.

Baby Echium amoenum: so cute.

Post Script: I also went to Calgary's Garden Show this morning. A nice chat with Lyndon and then the purchase of the book Edible Plants for Prairie Gardens by June Flanagan and two large flat spirals from Amazon Iron put a dent in my pocketbook but I suppose there are worse things I could spend my money on.

Four evergreens that aren't trees

'Morden' yew: the only evergreen shrubs I gladly have.

At the back of our property we still have two islands of snow covering the shadiest parts of our yard. However, it appears that our very cold March is finally melting away, replacing the pristine white of winter with the many wilted brown spectres of perennials I didn't bother to tidy up last autumn.

I sometimes think this is actually the hardest part of the year for gardening. When other parts of the world are bursting forth with green grass and spring blossoms, I know that it may still be between a few weeks and a month before I see any early flowers appear in my yard.

Perhaps this is why garden designers suggest that one include evergreen shrubs and trees in a garden plan. And I get that and perhaps I would... except that the majority of evergreen trees and shrubs are boring to me. Unapproachable with their prickliness and eventually daunting in their potential mature size, I also feel intimidated by the commitment factor. I'm getting better, but I do tend to move things around a lot as I learn what works in a space and what doesn't. This approach doesn't work well for a shrub or tree of any kind.

That said, I do have two 'Morden' yews that I am very happy with. Their needles are soft, they have grown back in previous years when they have gotten tip kill and their overall growth is slow which means they can stay put in their smallish area for many many years to come.

But I'm not writing to extoll the virtues of hardy yews. The last few days as the snow has melted off the beds, I've been delighted to find a few plants that look exactly as they did when they first disappeared under a blanket of cold many months ago. These are evergreen perennials and I love the texture, colour and apparent hardiness of their foliage. All of them are ground covers: "Down low and fun to grow" is what one of the companies that produces them says. Well, they aren't a circus act, but they are definitely heartening plants to find after a long winter.

Creeping Thyme
I have several different creeping thymes in the garden including 'Purple Carpet and 'Pink Chintz' and except for the Woolly thyme which has a different leaf than the others, I've lost track of where I've planted each specific cultivar. These thymes are different from the culinary variety which I seem to have to replant each May. Last year, I planted 2 inch pots of creeping thyme between my stepping stones and they have filled in nicely. They seem to grow quickly and except for the Woolly thyme, produce a carpet of pink flowers in late spring/early summer and then sometimes sporadically again in autumn. At this time of year, I love seeing the frost on the little leaves, greener and bluer than the still straw-coloured grass.

Thymus pseudolanuginosus on the right meets
Veronica liwanensis (Turkish Speedwell) at the top – actually another evergreen ground cover!

Dwarf Pussy-Toes
I purchased this plant last August when I was visiting my parents in BC. I admired a one foot patch of it in the Roots to Shoots Nursery garden and bought a 2 inch pot to plant in one of our raised beds. I was very surprised to see it looking perfect when the snow melted earlier this week. The foliage is soft and pressing my hand into it feels like a cushion. I'm curious to know what it will look like when it blooms, but at this point the pleasant tactility of its foliage is enough of a winning feature as is.

Antennaria dioica 'Minima:' plant cushion of softness

Wineleaf Cinquefoil
As this plant spreads, I may divide it and replace more of my creeping thyme with this perennial. Potentilla tridentata 'Nuuk' is rated as low as Zone 1, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it looks so amazing coming out of our Calgary winter. The things that drew me to this little plant include the shiny energetic quality of the leaves, the bright red colour of the stems, the tiny white strawberry-like flowers that appear in spring/early summer and the changing colour of the foliage come autumn.

Potentilla tridentata 'Nuuk:' named for the capital city of Greenland!

Creeping Dogwood
Also known as Bunch Berry, I love Cornus canadensis! It reminds me of hikes through forests on the coast of BC, it has lovely little flowers in early June and the leaves turn shades of russet and burgundy at the start of cold weather. I'm very surprised that this grows in Calgary, but I have it planted in the shade in a sheltered spot and make sure I include acidic mulch and even moisture. It grows very slowly, but has survived so far for the last 3-4 years, so I'm happy to have little reminders of my home province in the form of this plant genus.

This is a smaller clump of Cornus canadensis that I purchased last summer to add
to the larger small clumps I have in other sheltered areas of the yard.

This last week I've found myself frequently looking out the window or heading out to the garden to gently poke around for signs of life. Like watching a kettle to see if it will boil faster, I know I need to turn to other things and be patient. It has been nice to have these little plants to go visit each day and touch their firm, full of life leaves and be comforted while I wait for the spring garden to truly arrive.