So yes, this weekend there will be annuals on some of the
nursery tables, but if you’re looking for geraniums you still have a few weeks
to go. And for those of you itching to plant tomatoes, take a few deep breathes
and start sowing lettuce or planting thyme and sage instead.
It is however, the most brilliant time to start to plant
perennials. For those of us who have irrigation systems it’s time to switch
them on, as it’s been a surprisingly dry spring, and if we’re trying to plant,
we definitely need to be able to give them a nice long drink the moment they
meet the soil. I have a front porch
full of small plugs that I am planning to install on Tuesday with the help of
Gerardo and his planting crew. And since they are small plants it’s imperative
that I make sure they have good soil and decent water to get them off to a good
start.
It’s quite an impressive pileup of baby plants that greet me
when I walk out onto the porch to feed the bird feeders and then toss a handful
of hulled sunflower seeds to my sweet, single, surviving chicken. I’ve never
done an install of just plugs at my own house, but I’m trying to plant in
masses more, and it’s the only way to make an impressive show without spending
an equally impressive pile of money.
Unfortunately gardening sometimes is a choice. Time or
money. And, since I don’t have unlimited funds, I’m banking on having more
patience.
I’d like to have the ability to spend oodles of money for
big, full-grown plants, but starting out with things that are a tad younger can
be equally impressive if you just wait for a year or two. I have flats of foxgloves
and poppies and nepeta and salvias and agastache and phlox and echinacea. Woo
hoo. And we are planning to get them all in the ground in one go.
I’ve been inspired by all the massive swathes of perennials
that I see in garden books and magazine spreads, and in the gardens I help
install out here, but my wallet can’t quite manage the requisite quantities
when bought in the one, two and three gallon sizes. So I’ve downgraded to a
size I can afford to plant in groups of 20 plus. Sixty echinacea will hopefully
make a grand impression, as will the 50 phlox flanking them. I have never
planted this way before in my own garden but after years of planting three of
this and 5 of that, I’ve come to see that the wave of the future for my garden
is volume, volume, volume.
Of course, it’s harder to find plugs of unusual plants, but that
doesn’t mean I’m still not going to grab up the rarities that cross my path,
which is why the entire tray of white flowered ajuga that showed up at Marders
a little too small for the perennial tables didn’t go back to the growers but
found it’s way to the trunk of my car instead. As did a mass of the half priced
primroses from what is called the Belerina series that are on the past-bloom 50%
off table. These are hardy, so next year they will be quite lovely when they
pop up in my partial shade areas.
There are more of the lovely little Japanese primroses call
sieboldii that have blooms shaped like snowflakes that I have my eye on as well,
but as I have some of them already, I’m waiting to let customers see the blooms
first so they too can enjoy them before I sweep them all into my own greedy
little arms. I also am longing for more forget-me-nots that got dug up
(unintentionally) when tulips were installed with a little too much enthusiasm
two years ago. I noticed they were missing last spring, but promised myself
that I would try to grow them by seed before I invested in plants so I’m
scattered the requisite seeds in early spring and have my fingers crossed.
However, I’m not that hopefully.
As I have a garden that needs a few days a week to manage, and
I still haven’t won the lottery and thus am forced to earn a living to pay for
my plant addiction, I have to have help. And help can sometime be a little less
discriminating then it should be. This is how I lost years and years of well-established
Creeping Jenny. And all my baby hellebore seedlings. The new rule in my garden
is no hoes, no rakes and no blowers. Everything that gets removed has to be
removed by hand and has to be approved, visually, by me, before its little feet
are removed from the soil.
This means I have a lot of baby seedlings pushing their
tender little leaves up towards the sun. I already know that some are
foxgloves, which is fantastic. And also, that some are the dreaded Impatiens biflora otherwise known as Jewelweed. Jewelweed is actually not that terrible
(rubbing it’s crushed leaves on your skin immediately after contact with poison
ivy has actually prevented the rash and if you keep dabbing mosquito bites with
its juice for long enough the bite won’t swell and itch) but it does grow to be
five feet high in my garden and smothers other, more desirably seedlings. So I’m teaching the hands that help me
to learn the difference. And how
to get down on your hands and knees and really weed. They’re really not that
enthused, as they would prefer to rake the soil clean with their hoes and dress
it up with a lovely layer of nice clean mulch. But as I’m after a more Miss
Haversham goes on a binge planting effect, it’s a skill that I am requiring
they learn.
Wish me luck, and if you stop by for some
forget-me-nots leave a few on the tables for me.
Paige Patterson needs to invest in a pair
of kneepads as she has now been on the planet for over a half century.
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