Blithewold has been pretty lucky so far.  For a while it seemed like there must be an invisible 8′ high barrier encircling the property but in the past couple-three (four?) years the phantom fence has been breached on occasion by those timid, hungry, cloven hoofed landscape destroyers we affectionately call deer.  Lately we’ve seen the tell-tail evidence of more frequent visits and today I caught sight of a pair just after they had breakfasted on delicious tulip tops in the North Garden and Rose Garden.  What worries me is that all of the deer in Bristol probably know now about the Blithewold All-You-Can-Eat breakfast buffet.  Gail and I scattered Milorganite fertilizer (they hate that stuff) over all the tulips in every garden to try to discourage these hungry visitors. And we’ll have to keep reapplying as more and more tasty buds surface.

You know me – I prefer to encourage visitors to Blithewold so here’s my two-birds/one-stone solution: The more welcome visitors there are on the grounds, the less frequently (much less!) we’ll see the unwelcome ones – and with any luck we’ll still have a stupendous tulip display.  Here are a few shots from my morning walk to entice you…

I hope you can help!  Now if we could just book some pre-dawn bus tours…  Do deer dine in your garden?  How do you discourage them?

When Fred (Blithewold’s dir. of hort.) suggested that Gail and I start making our own potting soil, we were totally game.  We had already started looking into alternatives to our peat based mixes and were interested in trying out this coir stuff that everyone is talking about.  Coir (rhymes with foyer) is a coconut industry byproduct – when coconuts are harvested for the meat and milk the fiber (the coir) from the shells is used for all sorts of other things – like rope, doormats, the pots we’re now using instead of peat pots – and the coir dust makes an excellent soil amendment.  It’s on the slightly acidic side of pH neutral, has high water retention and slow release; it’s re-wettable, and biodegradable.  It’s also an easily and sustainably renewable resource.  Peat moss, on the other hand, grows back at a rate of 1-2 millimeters per year and must be very carefully harvested in order to remain at all sustainable.  And the amazing thing about peat bogs is that peat absorbs carbon dioxide and as it’s held in the earth, the bogs act as global coolers.  When the bogs are disturbed however, the gas is released which, as you know, contributes to global warming.  (Very uncool.)

Personally, I’d rather leave the bogs alone but peat moss has forever been every gardener’s go-to soil amendment.  In terms of feeding the soil though, there are much better alternatives – like shredded leaves, mushroom compost, and everyday garden compost – all three of which add nutrients while improving the texture, aeration, and water retention.  Coir is more like peat – it’s a nutrient sponge that retains and releases whatever is added to it. Its water holding capacity and re-wet-ability make it an ideal potting mix ingredient.  (Potting mixes need to be Goldilocks-perfect:  Not too heavy, too light, too wet, or too dry – but juuuussst right.)

The great people at The Good Earth in Hope, RI offered to share a pallet of Fibre Dust, LLC Coco-Coir bales with us – none of us needed all 990 odd pounds – so Gail and I packed my little car with a third of the pallet which should keep us going for a while.  One 12″x12″x5″ tightly packed bale puffs up to 2.2 – 2.5 cubic feet or about two thirds of a 32 gallon container.

For potting up transplants right now, we’ll add it to the potting mixes we already have on hand.  As we start work on potting up the container bed, we’ll mix it with screened compost.  And next year when we sow seeds we might consider trying soil blocks like the ones the Holschers make at The Good Earth – we could reduce our reliance on peat packs and then be very nearly, almost entirely peat free.

Have you used any coir based potting mixes?  (Do you make your own?) What do you think of it?

The weather has been so mild this past week that we couldn’t help but be outside cleaning up – about two weeks ahead of last year.  And I know we’re not alone – it seems like everybody has been out, raring to go as if we’ve all had a wicked case of cabin fever.  It really is amazing how balmy and warm the 40′s and 50′s can feel when the sun is at just the right angle.  Two groups of volunteers came in to cut back and rake out the Display Garden and the North Garden and today, our one gray day, Gail and I worked on the dry shade bed by the Moongate. To me there’s almost nothing else as gratifying as revealing hidden growth with a gentle raking or a snippage of old foliage.  In the Display Bed we discovered a carpet of Teasel seedlings; in the North we uncovered the velvety beginnings of Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis); and in the dry shade bed we found some tiny daffodils nearly ready to bloom under the Lily turf (Liriope) straps.  Here is a partial list of the other plants we cut way back this week:  grasses (except the Stipa), echinacea, chrysanthemum, sage, nepeta, hakonechloa, Siberian iris, epimedium, geranium and some clematis (careful – there are a few to not cut back…).  I know I’m forgetting some. If you have questions about anything to cut or not to cut back, feel free to leave a comment.

Everything changes so quickly in a few warm days.  It’s not just us gardeners who are all of a sudden out and about, but the entire landscape is taking the cue to get up and out too – just in time for the official start (tomorrow, is it?).  And if we don’t take a minute to notice it starting now, we’ll miss the transition altogether and end up in June wondering what the heck happened to spring.  I can’t deny that this is my favorite time of year.  I am such a new-growth-on-plants junkie that I will give any emerging leaf my undivided attention (this could explain my addiction to houseplants…) and no matter how busy I am,  I don’t want to miss a single one.  So in between spring chores I try to make note of the so-subtle additions of color washes to the sepia landscape, listen to the increasing cacophony of bird voices and keep my eyes peeled for anything new.

Gail and I finished up today just before the … hail.  Of course we always worry a little about taking away all of the plants’ lovely leafy insulation, but it’s time and they will be fine.  Have you done your cut back, clean out yet?  Are you keeping a mental or actual log of the signals of spring?

Many thanks as always to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for thinking up and hosting a monthly blooming show and tell.  I’m a little late to the Ides of March party but it’s a blow-out.  There are well over a hundred posts already and this month in particular is truly fascinating to compare notes on the start of spring.

Spring is just-just getting going here – the crocuses have opened in the last couple of days; the skunk cabbage are taking their time; the pussy willows are out; and I even spotted the very first and very most tiny daffodils (could it be ‘Bartley’?).  The adorable snow drops have been blooming for a little while now but we have such a pathetic display of them that I’m making some notes to remember to remedy that on the July bulb orders.  The hellebores didn’t fare too well this winter – we lost a couple of pretty ones.  The H. foetidus survived but the last snow beat them up a bit.  The Heaths made it through the snow and are still looking lovely – remember, if you plant some, their Barbara Streisand “best side” faces the sunny south.

(I want you to appreciate that for some of these pictures I had to actually lie down on the ground.  It may be one of Mother Nature’s best jokes that to get a good look at the rainy season’s first flowers, one must get down and dirty. Hover over for titles and click on for a larger image.)

The greenhouse is heating up and full of spring too.  Here are some of the blooming beauties indoors:

I’m not sure of which rosemary that is – it truly is a remarkably deep blue – can anyone provide an i.d.?  And we know that the Eomecon (a member of the poppy family) is “perfectly hardy” here (so says Ed from Opus Topiarium) but we have been torturing it in pots for a couple of years now.  Maybe this year we’ll get it in the ground.

Are you taking notes now for things to do (and buy) later?  — Did you lose anything this winter?

Take a pretty close look right about now and you’ll see it everywhere – spring is just poking it’s head out of the ground.  The daffodils are 4 or 5 inches tall in some places, the crocuses were up this morning and probably open by now and one of the more bizarre wildflowers – the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is suddenly snout out.  A few of the tulips in the Rose Garden are even showing some serious leaf – I hope the deer don’t notice…

And in the greenhouse spring is poking out of packs and our new coir pots — we switched to coir fiber pots from peat for a couple of reasons:  Coir is a renewable resource (coconut husk) whereas peat is not – peat sources are definitely dwindling.  Also the peat pots don’t break down quickly enough to even throw away in our compost and we’ve been told that the coir pots break down so fast we can actually plant them.  I’ll keep you posted about how we like them.

Gail and a few volunteers did a bunch of seeding last week while I was away and I thought I’d share their list of accomplishments with you really so that I could have a better idea of who’s who on the benches.  Many of the seeds have already germinated because we had a 3-4 day stretch of sun and heat after sowing – for some seeds that’s all it takes.  – By the way, the sweet peas Gail and I sowed with our no-soak method on February 24th, germinated in about a week .

Warning – this is a long list in no particular order (aside from the date).

March 4th:  pennyroyal, hollyhock, Rudbeckia, Asperula, parsley, Viola, Salvia, Eryngium, Centranthemum, kale, cabbage, lettuce, Phystostegia, Lysimachia, statice, artichoke, dahlia, petunia, Swiss chard.

March 6th:  Artichoke, Eryngium, leeks, Orlaya, Calendula, Dicranostigma, Asclepias, dahlia, kale, cabbage, Aquilegia.

and this week, March 11th:  beets, California poppy, lettuce, creeping zinnia, annual Phlox, Nicotiana, Ipomopsis, fountain grass, Gomphrena, pink paintbrush grass, Asclepias, Salvia.

We do start things early because of having the greenhouse but even if all you have is a sunny windowsill, artichokes could be/should be started now because the seedlings need at least a 2 week period of cold (no warmer than 50 degrees, but not freezing) after germination in order to produce flowers the first year.

If you have any questions about the list – if want more details about anything in particular, please let me know.  Have you seen spring emerging?  Have you started any seeds?