Anyone who has ever been to a flower show in February or March knows that the exhibitors work very hard to manipulate the seasons.  We’re all so ready by now for winter’s end – especially when there’s more snow in the forecast – that it’s a delicious thing to walk into a cavernous room filled to the corners with plants in fully impossible bloom.  I used to go to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show even when I didn’t have a patch of ground to my name just to see and smell spring and pretend the sun was shining.  This year I missed the Rhode Island Flower Show but … drum roll, please … I’m headed to PA for my first ever glimpse of the one and only Philadelphia Flower Show.  I’m prepared to be overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, we’re forcing the season just a little too.  Forsythia and Quince will come pretty quickly indoors now – The buds on the branches we picked should be starting to break in a week or so – just in time for my return to work after a little vacation.  Now is also the time to prune the fruit trees so we also picked up some flowering crabapple branches that Fred and Dan had worked on.  Those will take a little longer to open up.  The best branches for forcing are the ones you’ve removed for shaping rather than the long sucker-y water shoots.  When you bring branches inside, make a new sharply angled cut, split it vertically a couple of inches or some say to even smash it a little to expose more pith to the water.  For faster forcing, use very warm water and change it daily; to slow down the bloom, keep the branches in a cool room, in cool water.

I’m looking forward to my trip but I really wonder if I’ll see anything as lovely as this lichen which, since it’s living on a downed branch,  is only about as long for our world as a flower show exhibit.   While we’re on the subject of lichens…  did you know that they are actually a partnership of two organisms – a fungus and an alga?  I didn’t!  I also just learned here that Beatrix Potter, famous for Flopsie, Mopsie and Mr. McGregor, is credited with first proposing the existence of that relationship (which scientists are still debating about defining as “parasitic”).  Learn something new everyday.

Will I see any of you in Philadelphia?  I’ll be sure to compare notes and share pictures (if I manage to get any) when I get back the week after next.  Think spring and force it if you have to!

I’ve gone soft.  The thaw we had a couple of weeks ago has totally ruined me for the rest of winter.  I can’t go outside in the freeze anymore without complaining every bit as bitterly as the wind that has been blowing through my hat.  But when the sun is shining, it’s toasty warm in the greenhouse and I have every reason to stay comfortably happy (and a little soft) inside. – Because with the sun’s rise over the winter hump, the growing season is beginning in earnest.  There’s new growth on plants that have been sitting tight, biding their time ’til the sun came out and there has been a baby boom of aphids and white fly and scale  – they’re born to feed on all that delicious tender growth.  We are actually waiting to fertilize the greenhouse so that we can slow down the critters first.  (Mission impossible?…)

And it’s time to sow our first batch of seeds which need the night’s chill (60 and below) to grow and be happy.  We’ll be starting 13 varieties of sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) tomorrow – that’s down from 17 or 18 last year. – I was very restrained with our order this year!  In Annuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens, Wayne Winterrowd talks at length about the proper methods for germinating sweet peas.  It’s common practice to nick or soak sweet peas before sowing them but we don’t do either one.  We simply sow them a 1/2″ deep in pots filled with a fairly fine textured potting mix (Metro 300 series with Coir).  We water them in, keep the pots evenly moist, and wait – usually about 2 weeks.

Mr. Winterrowd also mentions that sweet peas don’t like their roots disturbed at all when planted and we’ve been doing that for years too by pulling the peat pot off when we plant them.  The transplants do seem to take a little while to get going though I can’t say that we’ve ever lost any or had anything but a stupendous show at exactly their right moment.  Perhaps sweet peas are not as delicate and fussy as they’re made out to be.  That said, we have made a change in the pot department – this year we will be sowing them in pots made of coir (coconut husk – a renewal resource) which can be safely planted in the ground and will degrade much faster than peat which tends to take ages to break down.

Do you grow sweet peas too?  Do you generally follow a seed packet or a how-to guide’s instructions to the letter or do you work out your own methods?  Have you been successful even against the odds?

When I first started at Blithewold I wasn’t the biggest fan of heliotrope.  It’s been a Rose Garden staple since way before my time, and I developed an almost instant aversion to it.  I found the fragrance to be so rich and sweet that it felt to me like being wrapped in heavy velvet drapery. – I’ve wondered if it was given its other name, “Cherry Pie”, because of having a sticky-gooey sort of scent.  I was also irritated by the plant’s prickly itchiness and didn’t love that sometimes the leaves turned black and fell off in great handfuls for no apparent reason.

But today as I was spraying our aphid prone cuttings with insecticidal soap, I realized that heliotrope has grown on me.  Maybe it’s the Old Lady in me coming out but I found the powdery scent sort of grandmother soft and comforting.  And I tend to like plants that bite back – like roses, eryngium, cardoons – and just like trying to keep roses black-spot free, I’m almost always up for a challenge.

So I did a little reading today and learned something(s) new.  The word heliotrope literally means  “to follow the sun”.  I told Gail that and she went to see if our plants were actually facing the sun.  Nope.  Heliotrope, alas, is no sunflower.  Evidently it’s one of horticulture’s weird misnomers.  Heliotropium arborescens is a Peruvian native and is capable of growing tree or at least shrubbery sized where hardy.  But it is extremely frost sensitive – it’s one of our canary-in-the-coalmine annuals – we know a light frost has hit when the heliotrope melts.  It is poisonous and irritating to the skin – it definitely causes a bumply itchy rash on contact with my forearms.  And it prefers rich well drained soil but hates being over watered.

We are lucky to have kept stock of a really old fashioned, highly scented variety and we propagate it year after year by cuttings taken towards the end of summer.  We usually use it exclusively and fairly intensely in the Rose Garden but we’re thinking of busting it out of that garden this year and planting it in the Display Garden.  I have a feeling that it will prefer being separated from the roses which love to be drenched as often as possible and it will also be a perfect addition to the bed where our (my) lavender/purple color experiment might take shape…

Have you planted heliotrope in your garden?  Do you keep it at nose level in hanging baskets?  Have you had trouble finding the heavily scented varieties?  Have you ever noticed it following the sun?

Our seed orders have started to come in!   I discovered though that I have to offer an official retraction of a snarky complaint in this post about Select Seeds‘ shipping charges.  Well, obviously, I read the wrong shipping chart and we sent in the right amount for plants, not seeds!  Duh.  It’s right there on the order form plain as day and the shipping charges for seeds are very modest and totally fair.  – As are their charges for shipping plants, I’m sure.  Along with our order, Select very nicely sent us check for the difference and they probably don’t even know that I was ever grumpy.  Mea culpa!

And just as soon as we turned in our seed orders, we turned to plant orders.  And we’re still in the thick of it.   Gail and I have gone so far as to make appointments with a couple of reps this week to hash out details.  We have a lot of ground to cover  (so to speak) this year so we’re excited to be able to have reason to try and make the order minimums with certain wholesalers and are looking into buying plugs as well.

Plugs, for those of you unfamiliar with them, are tiny starts that nurseries often buy in bulk in to grow on and sell when they reach a good size.  We have bought plugs in the past and planted them out in large areas that we wanted to fill in swathes – the area behind the Summer House is the best example.  Fred and Dan planted that a couple of years ago with plugs of ferns, tiarella, euphorbia and some grasses and those tiny plants have filled in quite nicely since.  It’s a great way for us to get a large quantity of something fairly inexpensively.  The only real drawback is the size.  The plugs are wee and it takes a couple of years at least for some of these plants to make a proper show.  The other issue we’re faced with is greenhouse space.  Depending on when the orders come in, we’ll have to make room for them in the greenhouse.  Perennials can usually go out early to harden off but we’re looking into getting plug annuals too.  Those would be delivered just as the greenhouse is filled to the gills with our own seedlings.  Gail is a sorceress when it comes to finding bench space but this might test even her magic.

We have also added to our bench space crunch by ordering dahlia cuttings rather than tubers which will need to be potted up and grown on in the greenhouse too.  We were seduced by the beautiful pictures of dahlia flowers and the friendliness of the folks at Corralitos Gardens in CA – plus they were recommended by someone we trust.  Have you ever bought dahlia cuttings rather than tubers?

The plugs and dahlia cuttings will be grand experiments for us – you know I’ll keep you posted on how it all goes.  What kinds of experiments (and magic) do you perform in your garden?

Just in time for Freaky Friday and Valentine’s day (I love that these days are back to back this year), my favorite Tim Burton creation, the Witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diane’) has just begun unscrunching little paper heart shaped flowers.  I’m in love!  — I guess it doesn’t take much, especially this time of year.

And in honor of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day even though it’s still days away, here are a few other bloomers from the greenhouse.  Please accept them as a special Valentine from all of us at Blithewold.  As (almost) always, hover over over for captions and click on for a dramatic display.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!   (be mine?)

and have a wonderful extra long weekend full of hearts and flowers