Color in the Garden - Try Coleus

REDHEAD


Here in northern Vermont we have four distinct seasons, maybe five if you throw in mud season. When it’s finally safe to plant (average May 30 where I live) we look forward to as much color as we can pack into our gardens. Discreet waves of color are pretty, but most of us like big splashes to cheer us through our very short summer.

I am turning more and more to coleus to achieve this effect. Most coleus grown from seed needs and prefers shade, while coleus grown from cuttings likes full sun. In fact, at least here in northern Vermont, the more sun, the brighter the color.

What follows are two photos of the same plant I had hanging in the house all winter. One side was facing the sunny window and one side was facing the inside room.







Coleus benefits from moist soils or regular watering and I always pinch off any flowers to encourage foliage growth. Coleus were popular in the Victorian era as a house plant, and today’s souped-up varieties combine brighter and unusual colors with distinct ruffling and textures. An easy way to show off the colors is to plant them in contrasting color groups.

I grow one novelty type coleus called “tilt a whirl.” It kind of twists as it grows and customers like it.

TILT-A-WHIRL


Fishnet looks sweet right now, and should shape up to a really neat plant.



FISHNET

Florida city yalaha has a bright center.




FLORIDA CITY YALAHA

Coleus are easy to grow and if grown in a pot, they are fine inside all winter. I cut them way back before bringing them inside and continue to trim them back during the winter as well. In the spring I have a huge plant with lots of room for cuttings to pass on the color.




HENNA





REDHEAD

The Snow is Melting ...

... And I am in my usual spring frenzy of planting seeds, transplanting seedlings and getting ready to uncover and dig perennials. I was wondering how people find the time to write in their blogs and thought it would be fun to take some “before” photos, with every intention of having fabulous “after” photos to show later in the spring.

The “big greenhouse” has a peeked roof and the two layers of plastic stay on it year-round. In the fall we roll up the plastic on our three larger hoop houses, as it gives the plastic a longer life and saves potential cave-ins from snow, which I did have one year.


Above and below is the “pansy house” right now.






And the pansies have been started in the big house..


Below is the "tomato house" as it looks right now.







Stay tuned!



The benches outside are empty and will slowly be filled as it warms up.



We haven’t put the glass (recycled doors) on the cold frame (above) along the big house because if we have a late snow it would break the doors. We are filling up the big house and even have some blooming thunbergia.






The red-winged blackbirds have arrived. The children next door are playing on the swing and I have even seen some motorcycles go by. They are predicting 60 degrees today and then back into freezing temps. Onward.

Great Flowers - Poor Sellers

Sometimes I am the only customer for some of the flowers I grow. There are a number of reasons for this. Many gardeners are not familiar with these plants and I don’t have photo tags for them. Seed catalogs push new varieties and they also carry the most popular, familiar varieties.

I always plan on advertising the underused flowers better with photos and information .... and I don’t find the time.

One of my favorites flowers is lavatera trimestris or "rose mallow". It is related to hibiscus and hollyhock and can bloom up to five feet, but the common ‘silver cup’ is typically about 3 - 4 feet. Lavateras do best in areas with cool summers, so here in central/northern Vermont they usually do well.





LAVATERA

The most common cultivar is a pale pink. I like 'tanagra' as well, which is rosier, and there is a shorter white version.



'Tanagra' LAVATERA



'Twins White' LAVATERA


Not only is this a showy bloomer most of the summer, it’s also great in bouquets. At farmers’ markets, my bouquets with lavatera sell first.






Summer visitors are always surprised by my tithonia. It’s a bright orange flower and a real stand-out. I have seen it listed as a good cut flower, but I find it better for display, as the stem is hollow and it hasn’t held up well for me in bouquets.



'Torch' TITHONIA

'Twinkle' phlox is an adorable short (8”) grower, good for sunny borders front of borders. It comes in a mix of bright colors.



Twinkle Phlox

I also like tri-colored amaranthus. It's a head turner and is actually an edible herb, although I haven't tried it in that capacity.





AMARANTHUS tri-colored


Verbena bonariensis is a perennial south of us, but here it is a well-loved annual. It blooms from mid-summer until frost and butterflies love it. It is tall (4 - 5 feet), but needs no staking. Its lavender ball-like blooms are somewhat similar to allium, but there are tons of them on slim branches, giving it an airy, swaying appearance. It is one of those delicate looking plants that's actually tough. I have a few customers who buy these by the tray for landscaping, but very rarely do I sell a single six pack.




Verbenea Bonariensis




All of these plants do best in full sun here.

New Annuals I’m Trying from Seed (Part I)

I like thunbergia and grow it in hanging baskets. I always assumed it was a shorter vine, but apparently it grows seven feet or more. In the baskets I just pinch it when it heads out. This variety, ‘Blushing Susie’ looked particularly pretty.


BLUSHING SUSIE

I have read that if you grow thunbergia in a pot you can cut it back in the fall, bring it inside, and have blooms over the winter.


We have a “pansy greenhouse” which has one heater and still occasionally goes below freezing. We put our tough plants in there like dianthus and dusty miller and of course, all kinds of pansies. New this year will be the viola ‘Endurio Sky Blue Martien’ which is an All American Selections 2010 "cool season award winner".


ENDURIO SKY BLUE MARTIEN


The Panola series is a cross between a pansy and a viola and is very floriferous. I am adding 'Panola Baby Blue Mix' to our collection.



PANOLA BABY BLUE MIX



One of my earliest blooming pansies is 'Purple Rain' and I will offer it again, along with a new variety, 'Rain Blue and Purple. This series spreads and is taller than others. It can cascade, when used as an edging, making it perfect for window boxes and hanging baskets (if you have the patience to dead head them).


RAIN BLUE AND PURPLE

'Rain Blue and Purple' changes in color from purple and white to purple and blue as each bloom matures. The flower is 1.5 inches, smaller than most pansies, but there are so many of them there’s quite an impact.


I like the ‘profusion’ series of zinnias and this year I am also branching out to try some of the ‘zahara' series. These are not cutting zinnias, rather shorter varieties used for bedding. My problem with zinnias in our cooler growing conditions has always been botrytis and the "profusion" series have been trouble free. 'Zahara promises more of the same, with 20 percent larger flowers.


ZAHARA MIX


ZAHARA YELLOW

Deer and My Garden ~ ~ ~ and Deer-resistant Cut Flowers

I am not a hunter, but when I see deer grazing in my perennial gardens I find myself thinking unkind thoughts about the graceful creatures.

A good fence or a gun are really the only two surefire ways to keep deer out of your gardens. I’ve tried human hair, blood meal, soap bars, urine of all sorts, and all kinds of sprays.

The best product I have used is called Tree Guard. It has Bitrex in it, a bitter compound that has been used to stop children from sucking their thumbs, and also has a latex to adhere to the leaves. Unfortunately the latex gummed up my sprayers and perhaps the company has now fixed this problem. This spray does last a few months with one application, but of course it wouldn’t effect new growth. In my case I have too many plants in too many places to maintain the sprays.

A few years ago the deer were so plentiful that while we slept they were walking up and down the benches of plants for sale, munching whatever appealed to them: a Bambi buffet. And so we constructed a fence around the shade display garden and another fence around the area where we keep hostas and surplus plants.

We forgot to close the door one night and a bear wandered into the enclosure, realized s/he was fenced in, and completely tore down one side of the fence to escape.


Deer are hungriest in the early spring when the first shoots in a garden must look extremely appetizing. One year a friend and I decided to fill our village shopping area with spring flowers. Twenty window boxes crowded with tulips poking out of the soil were ready to move. I put them by the driveway to be picked up. The next morning it looked as if a herd of elephants had attacked the boxes. Half of them were knocked over and every tulip was destroyed. The answer, for spring flowers, is daffodils.

If the deer are hungry enough, they will munch on just about anything, but there are certain plants they generally find unappealing. They’d rather not eat fuzzy leaves like lambs’ ears or foliage with aromatic leaves such as ornamental oregano or most herbs. I have no idea why they gobble my roses, thorns and all, and seem to like tomatoes as well. Supposedly they don’t eat poisonous plants, but they munch on my smaller delphiniums.

From my 20 plus years of donating plants to the deer, I have found they usually leave certain plants alone, and using that knowledge I am planning a deer resistant garden just for cut flowers with the following plants:

Perennials

Aconitum (monkshood)
Achillea (yarrow)
Amsonia
Artemesia
Astilbe
Astrantia
Baptesia (false indigo)
Digitalis ambigua (a true perennial foxglove)
Echinacea (cone flower)
Monarda (bee balm)
Nepata (cat mint)
Peonies
Salvia

Annuals -
Blue salvia
Cleome
Cutting marigolds
Dahlia
Snap Dragons

There is a nursery in Michigan that only sells deer resistant plants, so you can look up www.deerresistantplants.com to see what they recommend. And keep your fingers crossed.

Heirloom Tomatoes

Tomatoes are the most widely grown fruit in US home gardens. Proponents of heirloom tomatoes say they taste better than hybrids. I’ve tasted some mighty good hybrids, but then again I remember my “first time” with ‘Prudens Purple’.



Reif Red Heart


I define an heirloom as a variety that can reproduce from saved seed and that existed before World War II. Hybrid tomatoes are bred for production and disease resistance first and then flavor. You can not save their seeds as they will not reproduce true to type.

The best selling heirloom tomato is ‘Brandywine’ and it is now offered by most mainstream catalogues. The fruit is a dark pink and the leaves look more like potato leaves.

Brandywine


Unfortunately, so many individuals got involved in saving seeds from this variety that inferior strains came onto the market. Some ‘Brandywine’ tomatoes can taste pretty bland. Furthermore, it has not been a good producer for me and it is late season. I offer it because customers ask for it, but I would also recommend ‘Pruden’s Purple‘ for the northern grower, as it ripens a week or two earlier than ‘Brandywine’ with similar flavor.

Last summer I trialed all kinds of heirloom tomatoes, but the cool wet season topped off by by late blight thwarted most of my efforts.

My customers tend to be enthusiastic gardeners, so I will offer a good selection of heirloom tomatoes again. Among those that I will also definitely grow for myself are the following:

‘Moskvich’ - A really early (60 days) indeterminate, tolerant of cooler weather and with promised good flavor for such an early tomato. Most heirlooms tend to ripen late for my short season.

‘Earl of Edgecomb’ - This is an orange tomato with both “excellent yield and exceptional flavor .” It is an heirloom from New Zealand that matures at 73 days.

‘Cherokee Purple’ - A lot of serious tomato growers pick this one as having the best flavor. It’s on the late side, so I will try to put some good healthy plants in the ground.

I’m not a purist, and my garden will have just as many hybrid tomatoes as heirlooms. I grow the heirlooms more out of curiosity and for fun, hoping I’ll find a winner. The hybrids are the backbone of my tomato garden. Here is a list of other heirloom varieties I will be growing to sell.


Aunt Ginny’s Purple
Black Krim
Burpee Gloriana
Cabot
Cosmonaut Volkov
Early Rouge
Glacier
Kellogg's Breakfast
Kimberly
Koralik
Opalka
Oregon Spring
Pink Brandywine
Prudens Purple
Red Penna
Reif red heart
Siletz
Stupice
Sweet Home
Urban Beef Steak

Tomatoes

At Amanda’s Greenhouse we offer more than 50 varieties of tomatoes and in recent years the two best sellers have been ‘Big Beef’ and ‘Sungold’. I prefer ‘Sun Sugar’ more than ‘Sun Gold’. It is sweeter and still has enough of that tomato flavor to make it my favorite of them all (until my next “favorite” comes along. )

Here is the “tomato house” early last year.



Just about any full-sized vine-ripened tomato makes me happy, as they all taste 100 percent better than anything you can buy during the winter. I always try to offer plenty of early varieties so that all gardeners will have the opportunity to have some kind of tomato harvest, no matter what happens with the growing conditions.



Besides the popular ‘Early Girl’ I offer ‘New Girl’ which is very close to the same maturity date, but reviewers report better flavor and more disease resistance.

Earlier yet is ‘Stupice’, an early heirloom tomato with 2 - 3 inch fruits which also has good flavor. ‘Cosmonaut Volkov’ is a Russian heirloom that matures at 65 days and is quite a bit larger than ‘Stupice’. This one grows well in containers. Other early varieties are ‘Polfast’, ‘Applause’, ‘Polbig’ and ‘Legend’.

‘Celebrity’, ‘Jet Star’, ‘Big Beef’ and ‘Better Boy’ are among the popular midseason tomatoes.

When I moved to Cabot more than 20 years ago I bought a Canadian heirloom from Veseys for the name, ‘Cabot.’ It turned out to be a heavy and early producer. They dropped it from their line and the only place I can find it now is Sand Hill Preservation Center, a wonderful operation that specializes in heirloom seeds and poultry.

The idea of green or black or white tomatoes does not float my boat, but I will offer ‘Aunt Ginny’s Purple’ for its “....early - excellent yield of deep pink 1 - 2 lb beefsteaks with excellent taste. And I like the sound of ‘Reif Red Heart’ which promises “...large perfect red hearts around one pound ... super taste.”

Last year late blight found its way to my town and cut short the tomato yield, but an heirloom cherry tomato, ‘Black Cherry’, continued to yield for quite a while. The blight did in most of my other heirlooms, but that didn’t stop me from ordering 20+ varieties to try this year.

I’ll write about heirloom tomatoes in my next blog entry. The seeds are arriving here and very soon the gro-lights will be turned on in my living room.

TOMATOES - Late Blight

Tomato growers in the Northeast had a hard time last summer. Not only was our spring colder than normal, we had record rainfall. Tomatoes are natives of South America and they didn’t appreciate these growing conditions. To top it all off ... along came late blight which thrives with cooler, wetter weather.





My heirloom tomatoes were the first to bite the dust, although “black cherry,” which is much better than it sounds, continued to yield for a long time.


This disease started from infected seedlings grown in the south that were shipped to big box stores in the north.


The strain which caused last summer’s problem was the same strain that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840’s. The blight releases wind-blown spores, and eventually most of us were hit, regardless of where we purchased our plants. Of course anyone reading this blog would only shop at locally -owned greenhouses, right?




KNOWING and PREVENTING Late Blight


For starters, if any of the diseased material ended up in your compost, definitely don’t use that near your tomatoes.


If you grow potatoes, don’t used saved potatoes as seed potatoes. certified clean.


Lesions on leaves will cross the center vein of the leaf.





Classic symptoms are large (at least nickel-sized) olive-green to brown spots on leaves with slightly fuzzy white fungal growth on the underside. Lesions on leaves will cross the center vein of the leaf.





Keep an eye on the foliage and remove and destroy anything that looks suspicious.


I will be planting more tomatoes in the greenhouse this summer. I have read that keeping water off the foliage slows the development of late blight. Home gardeners could try more potted tomatoes in spots under cover that get the sun.


‘Legend’ and ‘Juliette’ are both varieties that are said to have some resistance to this blight, so I will grow them as back-up. However the only thing I remember about ‘Juliette,’ which is a large cherry/grape type, is that the skin was really tough.


I’m almost finished with all my seed ordering and the next time I write I will list the tomatoes I am growing for customers and explain why I have picked those varieties.

2010 Resolutions and Ramblings

People often ask me what I do during the winter. I burrow in here, keep the wood stove going and spend way too much time on the computer. To help with bills I sell vintage clothing and accessories on eBay and Etsy. This gives me an excuse to get out there and hunt for treasures, one of my favorite pastimes

http://www.etsy.com/shop/VintagefromVermont

When you are on the computer a lot you make a whole new community of friends. I am a member of the Vintage Fashion Guild and I spend lots of time “over there” learning from my colleagues and sharing information and discoveries.

I also have an online group of gardening friends and am on several lists including Freecycle, AHS members (American Hemerocallis Society) , and one for folks who share a health issue with me.

I don’t “tweet” and can barely understand Facebook. Ultimately it is my great “real life” friends here in central Vermont who mean the most to me and who come first.

I have made two new year’s resolutions which may seem counterintuitive. 1) Get back to this blog and 2) Stay away from the computer for at least one hour after I get up in the morning.



Of course I am also perusing seed and plant catalogs and most of my orders are placed.

I buy in quite a lot started of seedlings (plugs)



Often the cost of a plug is just pennies more than the cost of the seed. The uniformity, easy of transplant and savings in fuel makes the additional cost well worth it.

I also start a lot of my plants under lights in the living room. Writing this blog makes me realize just how soon that process will begin.

New Annuals from Seed - Award Winners for 2010

Every year new garden seed varieties are named “All American Selections” because (supposedly/hopefully) they have superior garden performance in impartial trials across north America. I always try to offer all of the new AAS plants to customers.

For 2010 four flowers have been selected as the top new varieties and I will be growing all of them.

Gaillardia ‘Mesa Yellow’ is the first hybrid blanket flower on the market. It is bred for prolific flowering and compact growth with three inch blooms. Gaillardia burgundy overwinters in my gardens, so I have to wonder if this will be a perennial as well. I like the burgundy gaillardia, but it does demand considerable deadheading.



Snapdragon ‘Twinny Peach’ is a double flowered shorter snap (to 12 inches) with a blend of pink tones. The photos make me think of the bloom on stocks. I love the taller snaps for cutting and to me this is more of a novelty plant, albeit very pretty.



Viola ‘Endurio Sky Blue Martien’ (yes, that spelling is correct) was selected “... for its unique spreading/mounding and vigorous garden performance.” It is recommended for edging garden beds, window boxes and hanging baskets.



Zinnia ‘Zahara Starlight Rose’ is the last of the honorees and the one variety I am really excited to try. I have a hard time with zinnias and powdery mildew, and this one supposedly has good resistance. With a 2.5 inch bloom it should be a pretty flower for smaller bouquets as it is 12 - 14 “ high.