Category — Garden plans

Double tulip ‘Creme Upstar’, one of the many reasons to store your bulbs the right way.

My refrigerator is about half bulbs and half food.

In some households, this might be considered a bad thing. Even weird.

For others, it’s a sign of good things to come.

If you don’t have enough refrigerator space for all of your bulbs, you can give room to the most important ones first. Lily bulbs, as I’ve mentioned before, never actually go dormant, so I’d say it’s most important to give them refrigerator room.

Of course,  it’s also most important to plant them first. Not only can they be planted at summer temperatures, they actually take advantage of that warm weather to make  stronger growth for next year.

The moisture-loving frittilaries (some of them like it dry; some of them crave year-round moisture) are pretty similar. Like lilies, they have scales, and are shipped in plastic bags with soil around them; this kind of bulb may just not be designed to be out of moist soil.

Tulips, on the other hand, have a tendency to disappear if you plant them in moist soil, or while it’s still hot. Van Engelen recommends planting them when soil temperatures are about 55 F (13C). Soil generally stays warmer than the air for some time, so that means a fairly chilly outdoor temperature.  After it starts being nippy, but before the ground freezes, is what they recommend.

And in a perfect world with absolutely consistent weather, it would happen that way. In a perfect world, your properly-stored bulbs would arrive at just the right time for planting them. But we’re not in a perfect world, in case you hadn’t noticed, and weather is as changeable as–well–the weather.

There’s also the little matter of schedule. I have planted tulips in flying snow and in freezing rain and about two months later than I should have. (The soil wasn’t frozen, but I was. ) The bulbs did nicely in most cases, but I can tell you it’s a much pleasanter experience if you don’t wait for the rain and snow part.

This year, it’s not just my schedule; it’s the climate’s. It’s been hot late into the year. So even though I bought from specialized bulb dealers who ship at the proper date for planting, the proper date for planting turns out not to be the proper time for planting. It hasn’t cooled down yet.  In order to get the best out of my tulips, I have to store them.

I have often stored tulips in cool places other than the refrigerator. Cool places are in low cupboards, basements, the floor of a shed, storage room, or even under the bed. (Heat rises, coolness sinks.) Just make sure it’s somewhere where sun doesn’t hit and it doesn’t get too hot.

Also make sure that rodents can’t get to them. They adore tulip bulbs and will be happy to eat them up for you. And bulbs need to breathe, or they get moldy and even rot.  So don’t seal them up in closed box or bag.

This year, I squeezed all of my tulips into the refrigerator. It was still so hot that I just couldn’t find any other safe place that was really cool. I need to check my own refrigerated bulbs, to be sure they’re getting enough ventilation.

The refrigerator is actually a little bit cold for bulbs. Most refrigerators are in the high 30s to low 40sF (-1 to 4C); Van Engelen recommends storing bulbs at 50 to 70 degrees Farenheit (10 to 21 degrees Celsius); Old House Gardens recommends 40 to 50F (4 to 10 degrees C). But I figure it’s much better than what happens when you keep bulbs in the heat. If tulips bulbs are in the heat too long, they give up the ghost, and don’t flower. And it has been hot. 80 or 90 degrees F (27 to 32C). That won’t last much longer, but it’s not a good idea to plant any of my tulip bulbs until it cools off.  As the Old House Gardens instructions say, the later you wait, the happier tulips are.

Another thing to be aware of in refrigerator storage is that gasses from ripening vegetables and fruit can affect the bulbs. (So can exhaust from cars, if you’re inclined toward garage storage.) I’m hoping that shutting all of my produce in a crisper will keep that from happening.

Daffodils–and all the other kinds of narcissi–seem to be pretty much resistant to any kind of treatment–they may even sprout if you take them out of a forgotten bag which has been stored in the heat until the bulbs withered thin. (I don’t have to tell you this is a biographical story, do I?)  In this case, most of the bulbs may be brown all the way through, and those won’t make it. But otherwise narcissi are always worth a try, no matter what their condition, or the weather.  They may not make a flower that year, but they are likely to come back. Narcissi are tough.

I don’t know as much about the storage needs of the huge variety of other, smaller bulbs. But this information will at least give you some intelligent arguments for claiming refrigerator space.

References:

Van Engelen planting instructions (come with bulbs; I couldn’t find them on their website)

Old House Gardens planting instructions

I know only the tiniest bit about bonsai. But when I see trees growing out of rock, wind- and weather-shaped, I can’t help wondering if the inspiration came from high mountain trees like this. (Well, that and the ever-enticing concept of having a small world which you can shape and enter into entirely.) This tree, though huge by bonsai standards (a few feet tall), has a form and surroundings that bring to mind less-shaggy bonsai.

If I’m remembering rightly, Japanese culture has a spiritual and aesthetic reverence for things mountainous.

Including rocks. One my one visit to Japan, I visited one Shinto shrine which had a rock that was famous for curing respiratory diseases. (If you’re interested, I was exposed to a respiratory flu in Japan that lasted for six violent weeks when I got home. After it was over, my susceptibility to bronchitis did seem to taper off.) Buddhist and Shinto shrines always featured rock and plants, in one way or another.

Shinto is the indigenous spiritual practice of Japan; like most indigenous spirituality the world over, it concentrates on the cycles of nature. It was inspiring to me to be in a country where this type of worship had been respected, instead of systematically killed off as much as possible, as it was in Europe and the United States. Shinto seems to thrive along with the different sects of Buddhism, Christianity, and the other religions of Japan. People don’t seem to consider it exceptional to visit more than one kind of worship place; the religions aren’t in competition with each other.

While many Buddhist shrines had beautiful gardens,  I was most fascinated by the tiny plots of ritualized country that formed the Shinto shrines. There were so many of them in Tokyo, in amongst the skyscrapers and traffic noise.  At least one for every neighborhood, it seemed. With the help of an English-language guidebook, I walked to different ones each day and spent time sitting in them, listening to the sound of water from the bamboo fountain, watching suited businessmen come in for a quick prayer before going on with their day.

In my culture, religion is formally separated from nature (although a lot of gardeners heal that rift), a legacy of a time when nature, and those who understood its voices, were enemies of the church/state. In Japan, the connection between nature and spirituality seems to be a given. I can’t help feeling that anyone who has experienced time in nature knows that for truth.

I remember walking by a very small local shrine, a low fence enclosing a small triang

le of bare ground maybe ten square feet on a narrow city corner. I don’t know what kind of shrine it was, and since I had about ten words of Japanese, I couldn’t ask. My book didn’t  say.

I saw many dark rocks, smoothed by time, any carving or elaboration long since worn away. It gave me shivers. Ancient things do that for me. I feel somewhat the same way looking at Sierra granite, still holding on to the polishing glaciers gave it millenia ago.

I started out full of myself. And multiple enthusiasms. This would be the most unusual, fresh version of the Three Sisters the world had ever seen. And it was all going into my prize bronze-brown Vietnamese pot, the big one that I’d splurged on at the discount store (it was only a few dollars more than a plastic one the same size, I told myself). I had vague, secret-from-myself dreams of how I’d win the Fine Gardening container contest, with becoming modesty of course.

Then came the reality.

Those  yin-yang beans I bought to twine up the cornstalks? Well, as it happens, they were bush beans. They weren’t going to twine anywhere. And they didn’t seem to like the circumstances I’d put them in, either; I harvested two pods with two beans in them and that was it.  The leaves had a ratty white-spotted look, too, that I think was due to nitrogen deficiency. I did get enough beans to replace the ones I planted, though the ones I harvested were kind of scrawny.

OK, then there were the violetto trionfo beans that actually do climb. (I planted three of them, and three of the yin-yang beans. Six stalks of corn.) I’ve got at least one of them running up the cornstalk now. But they’re just blooming, and the way those corn cobs feel, the corn’s going to be long dead before the beans get ready.

And then there’s the corn itself. A Japanese exotic corn, striped pink, cream, and white. How cool is that? And it’s actually very pretty-but not nearly as healthy (or colorful) as I’d envisioned. I do admit to getting a laugh out of pruning corn, which has got to be the most Garden Society thing I’ve ever done.  The leaves would go dead, and the corn would look funky, so I’d cut off the dead ones. Pruning corn.

Even though it wasn’t what I expected, I have enjoyed seeing the corn evolve, from its first pale stripes to the dark burgundy color that’s spreading ever further along the stalk. And even though it’s not as tall and bushy and strong as I would have liked, I did get one small ear of wine-red corn on each stalk.

The cucuzzi climbed rampantly out of all the other pots I put it in-but it made a few pale leaves and petered out in this one. The Waltham butternut squash  I also put in there is just putting out its first blossom now. And the surprise Brown Sugar canna (deep brown foliage, pink flower, reputedly) I planted late? It did show a tentative green point a month or so ago. And then sank back into the earth.
I think this trio, or quintet, (or sextet, if you count the canna), needed a lot more water than they got in that pot. I put in a reservoir insert, so they did get some bottom watering. And I put in some water-conserving polymers into the soil. But  I think that reservoir just wasn’t big enough for such heavy drinkers. Especially in a ceramic pot that allows water to evaporate. It’s  a glazed ceramic pot, which is a lot less porous than unglazed. But still.

I think they all needed a lot more food than they got, too. Oh, I did use a heavy-on-compost mix for soil, and put in amendments, the way I do with all of my container plants. And I foliar fed them, the way I do my whole garden. But corn, beans, and squash are notoriously nitrogen-hungry. They are heavy feeders and drinkers, and I treated them like anorexics.

Recently, I also read that the Three Sisters idea was about handy harvest, as well as space saving. The corn would have been field corn-the kind you gather when it’s ripened hard, to feed to livestock. (William Alexander suggests a modern version: use popcorn.) The squash would have been winter squash or pumpkins–not harvested until their shells were hard. Late, like the corn. And the beans would have been dry beans, not ones you’d pick off the vine to eat fresh. Dried beans that get harvested when the pods dry.

I could look at this season’s formerly-known-as-star container and be disappointed. But you know what? I’ve enjoyed the little purple curling edges of the corn leaves, and I’m enjoying the purple bean flowers and vines spiraling around the almost-dead corn, and I enjoyed the magic of opening up my two little pathetic yin-yang pods and finding replicas of the little seeds I planted.
I even enjoyed pruning corn.

Reference:

The $64 Tomato, William Alexander, Algonquin Press, 2006

Places to get seeds:

yin-yang beans: Park’s
violetto trionfo beans (I  notice they are not in the current catalogue. They’d been sitting for some years): Pinetree Gardens
Japanese ornamental corn: JL Hudson
cucuzzi squash: JL Hudson
Waltham butternut: Pinetree Gardens

“With only a few exceptions (mule ears), the leaves of dry-environment plants are thick and leathery, and they may be waxy to the touch. Some dry-environment plants also have hairy leaves, which retain dew and reflect light.” pg. 73, Laird R. Blackwell, Wildflowers of the Tahoe Sierra. This Silk Tassel or Bear Brush (Garryia fremontia) bears out the light-reflecting part.

Fine, I hear you thinking. Nice natural history. But what has that got to do with my garden?

Well, for starters, if you have a hot, dry climate (like mine in summer), you’ll know that plants with these kinds of leaves will probably be easy to grow. And if you live in a cool, moist climate, you know plants with these kinds of leaves may be hard to grow.  And if you look at your own wild plants, you’ll get more ideas about what will do well in your area.

Not that it’s that simple. Rhododendrons and azaleas, with those reflective leathery leaves, don’t like sun in my area, and do very well in the cool rainy climate of the Pacific Northwest.  In fact, many varieties come from there originally.

And many of your wild plants may not do well in your garden because they need to grow with other plants, or have very very specific requirements that a gardener just can’t meet (unless that gardener is blessed).

And many gardeners aren’t interested in growing what grows easily in their area; they’re in love with some plant and must have it. The gardeners I like talking (or corresponding) with most tend to be like this. They push the boundaries of their climates, in order to grow the plants they love.  But they also know and love the plants that grow easily where they live.

It’s the heart of wisdom to know the basics: what plants like my area? What do they need to thrive? How do they fit in? How do the animals in my area fit in with the plant’s lives? How do soil, sun, and water combine where I live, to make plants grow?

When we know at least some answers to these questions, we’re better gardeners. We also become more deeply rooted in our own landscape.

Reference:

Laird R. Blackwell, Wildflowers of the Tahoe Sierra, Lone Pine Publishing, 1997

If anybody knows what this plant is named, let me know.  It’s one of my favorite high-mountain plants.

I don’t even know if it’s a shrub or a perennial. It has the hard green stems that say they might turn woody with time, although they don’t. It comes only to my ankles, but so does pinemat manzanita, and that’s a shrub.

I looked assiduously through two books, with many false alarms when I thought I’d identified it. Then I’d look at the actual plant. Nope.

Despite not knowing its name, this plant has taught me a lot about gardening. For starters, it gave me a beautiful example of minimalist groundcover.

It can also grow in amongst other plants, where it seems to stretch out a little, in order to get its share of sun.

And it’s also taught me this lesson: a plant doesn’t have to be glamorous or big or unusual to be a beautiful presence. I’ve never seen this plant flowering (maybe if I had, I would have been able to identify it), so I don’t know if it has gorgeous blossoms.  It doesn’t have exciting bark or unusual foliage; it’s not large or full. All I have seen is its leaves going from the brightish green of summer to the blazing yellow of fall. Morning sun lighting it up by the rocks makes it one of the most soul-satisfying sights of my mountain day-and a mountain day has many contenders for soul-satisfying sights.

Names come after the knowing of a plant, not before. I know this plant a little, and looking for its name has gotten me better acquainted. I looked at it more carefully, examined its structure and form, and thought about it in relation to other plants.

Since many things in life are a mystery, I’m not unhappy with the way things are, between me and this plant. Not all mysteries are meant to be solved.