The Garden Worm blog Digging up the best dirt on gardening!

March 28, 2012

Blooming in March

Filed under: Flowers,Our gardens,Slideshows,Spring — Judy @ 12:07 am

We have had the craziest winter/spring so far. Temps have been hovering in the 50-60 range with occasional forays up into the low 70s. The lack of a decent snow cover and good length of cold weather have pushed the plants into an early bloom, up to a month or so early! This is quite worrisome as we will surely get some more frosts, possibly even snow, before it finally warms up for good, and this can mean trouble with a capital T.

Caution! Scientific stuff coming up! So, first of all, do you know your Hardiness Zone? You can find it here on the new USDA interactive zone map. In general, your Hardiness Zone number indicates the maximum cold it may get in your area and plants that grow well in your zone can withstand these temperatures in midwinter and survive. Based on this map, we might be considered 5b-6a around here, but looking solely at this winter, we fell in the zone 8 range! Why does this matter? As the temperatures fall in beginning of winter, plants become acclimated to the lower temps and develop more hardiness and resistance to plant death. When the temps start warming back up, the plants become de-acclimated to low temps, hardiness is reduced, and plant death or winter injury can occur if sudden drops in temperature are experienced. You can read more about this here if you are so inclined.

The bottom line is that the peach trees, in particular, that are blooming now, along with everything else, are particularly susceptible to frost injury and those low temps that are sure to come may destroy our little peach crop. Crossing my fingers! Other plants may be OK, but with a shortened blooming period. We shall see what happens.

On a related note, I’ve got a slideshow for you of some of the blooms in my garden now. Sorry, my camera croaked so these are from my cell phone and the quality is not very good.

What is blooming in your gardens now? Are you in danger of further frosts too?

January 13, 2012

Wha?

Filed under: Our gardens,Winter — Judy @ 1:32 pm

Well, folks, apparently winter thinks it is finally time to arrive! Yesterday we had temps almost to 50 and the grass has been brown for weeks. The daffys were poking up about three inches, the grape hyacinths and crocuses were in full fall foliage, the snowdrops were blooming, and we were stuck somewhere between fall and winter, yet the date was almost mid-January. The weatherman said that we had had a little over seven inches of snow thus far at the airport, but I would definitely dispute that around our house. A full inch would have been generous – total! But overnight? A different story is being told. Here’s the proof:

Upper window

Deck door

Garage door and pots

Deutzia covered in snow

Chamaecyparis in snow

Frozen pool

Snowy pines

Yep, some pretty snow going on right now, but a few days ago we had this sunset.

January Sunset

I love the weather changes! Makes life exciting!

November 13, 2011

Drive-by mulching

Filed under: Fall,Our gardens — Judy @ 9:39 pm

We’re finally getting our gardens under control for the winter and today was a good day for our usual drive-by mulching routine. Most of the leaves are down on the trees in our yard with only a few left on our neighbor’s silver maple. Instead of all the effort to rake those leaves up to the road for the town to compost, we have found that our lawn mower does a great job of chopping them up into itty-bitty pieces for our own compost. After dealing with most of the leaves under the trees and mulching them into the lawn, we rake some into the surrounding gardens. Then, after cutting down the tallest or otherwise taking care of some of the more delicate plants by manual pruning, we run the mower over the remaining debris and leaves, AKA drive-by mulching. Voilà! nearly instant compost material for the gardens and clean-up for the winter.

Update: A post and subsequent comments over at The Garden Professors talk about mulching and using leaves as lawn fertilizer here.

In the meantime, take a look at a few of the goodies we still have left in the gardens.

Carex 'Toffee Twist'

Carex 'Toffee Twist'

Crabapples

Crabapples

Forsythia

Even the forsythia has great fall color!

Grasses

Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' against the blue fall sky

Lettuce

Still have lettuce coming on

Ligularia

Love the seed heads for the ligularia!

Oakleaf hydrangea

Stunning red leaves on the oakleaf hydrangea

What other colorful things do you have showing their stuff now? Are your gardens ready for the winter to come?

September 27, 2011

Caution: Winter approaching

Filed under: Fall,Flowers,Grasses,Our gardens — Judy @ 3:52 pm

The air has been soft and warm these last few days and the pool warm enough to swim in, BUT time to be outdoors in shorts and tank tops is getting short before the snow flies. The signs of winter approaching are getting more numerous. The fall grasses are starting to throw up their plumage.

Grasses

The Virgina creeper in the trees is starting to color up, and a few of the early maples already are turning red and orange. Some yellow is peeking through on the birches and the ashes and, with a little bit of rain, the last roses of summer are pulling out all the stops and blooming like crazy.

Cuyahoga rose

Rosa 'Cuyahoga'

Morden blush rose

Rosa 'Morden Blush'

The sweet autumn clematis is putting (Clematis terniflora, formerly C. paniculata) on a spectacular show this year with, it seems like, millions of tiny flowers.

Sweet autumn clematis

The ‘Nikko Blue’ and ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangeas are pinking up.

Hydrangea 'Endless Summer'

The crabapples

Yellow crabapples

Red crabapples

and the seedheads on the coneflowers and rudbeckias are ripening, soon to be devoured by the hungry birds.

Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne'

But the Autumn Joy sedum is still pink and the Amsonia hubrechtii is only just beginning to turn yellow.

Sedum and amsonia

Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Amsonia hubrichtii

This is one of my favorite fall plant combinations – their glory is still to come! Maybe there is still time yet!

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