Tag Archives: cool season flowers

cool season vegetables, gardening with children, roses

Gardening with Children

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The other day a young girl asked me, "Are you the lady that writes the flower column in the paper"? I was thrilled to know that my readership includes middle schoolers.  Our conversation soon turned to vegetables. Which are good to plant at this time of year and how late can they be started. Gardening can be a wonderful learning opportunity for all of us but especially for children.

In a garden, children can breathe fresh air, discover bugs and watch things grow. And, of course, a garden offers kids and everyone else fresh, tasty homegrown food. What better place for kids to play than in a place where they can use their hands and connect with the earth? Where else can they make a plan for a plot of land and learn the lessons of hope and wonder, suspense and patience and even success and failure? In a garden you can have conversations about life and even death in a way that doesn't seem so sad.

With the school year just starting, now would be the perfect time to encourage your child to grow something, keeping track of the progress by pictures and notes. Their daily actions really can make a difference for a sustainable future. Maybe what they learn could even be used for a school project. Here are some ideas.

September is the perfect time to start cool season vegetables. Carrots are fun to start from seed as they can be harvested even when small. For flavor it's difficult to beat a Nantes.   Nantes Coreless or Little Finger are two popular varieties.  They're not a carrot you'll find in the grocery store because they're difficult to harvest commercially and don't store well.  Both are juicy and sweet.  Nantes coreless grows to 6-7 " long, is blunt-tipped and fine grained.  Little Finger is unmatched for snacks, pickling or steaming.  It grows to just 3-4" long and is ideal for container gardening. too.

Red Cored Chantenay has broad shoulders and strong tapered tips.  This wedge-shaped carrot is also rarely grown by commercial growers.  For the home garden it produces 6" long carrots that keep well when left in the soil, store well after digging and are sweet and crunchy.  They perform well in heavy soil, too.

Danvers Half Long are another variety that are tasty raw, cooked, or juiced. They are one of the best carrots for storage as they stay crisp.  Carrots found at the super market are usually Imperators just so you know.

You can still start peas, beets, spinach, arugula, mustard and radish now from seed but it's better to start other veggies like lettuce, chard, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, onions, leeks and brussels sprouts from starts. If your veggies haven't gotten a good start before the soil cools, they'll just sit there until spring. Remember to rotate your crop locations so insects  and diseases don't cause problems. Also be sure to amend your soil with compost to replenish the nutrients that have been used by your summer veggies and flowers.  

Flowers in winter are always welcome so I like to plant early blooming types of sweet peas at this time of year. These varieties flower in the shorter days of late winter. Winter Elegance and Early Multiflora are common early flowering types. Also plant some of the more fragrant spring flowering heirlooms and Spencer's at the same time to extend your harvest time. My very favorite sweet pea with long stems for cutting and an intense fragrance is called April in Paris. Large ruffled blossoms are a soft primrose cream, tinted at the edges in dark lilac that deepens and increases with age. You can't go wrong no matter what color or style sweet pea you choose. They are all beautiful.

If you grow roses fertilize now to encourage another round of blooms.  A well-fed rose not only rewards you with beauty and fragrance but can stay healthy and resist attack from insects and diseases.   Roses grown in sandy soil or containers need more frequent feeding than those grown in loam or heavier soil.  Make sure the soils is moist before fertilizing and water well afterward.

Whatever you grow, include the kids in the garden. It's a free and fun activity.
 

color in the garden, cool season flowers, Flowering trees

Magnolia soulangeana or Saucer Magnolia

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I went to see a million daffodils  but I was too early. Filoli Gardens in Woodside has suffered from lack of rainfall like the rest of us and the daffodils know it. The treat I got instead was a massive display of Saucer Magnolias that scented the warm air with a sweet, lemony fragrance.  This tree loses its leaves in winter and even in the summer, the large green leaves are not very showy. But come late winter and kaboom you see them everywhere totally covered with huge, spectacular flowers. A tree in full bloom with a carpet of petals underneath can beckon us to stay a while.

Magnolias are native to China and has been cultivated in Chinese Buddhist temple gardens since 600 AD. Saucer magnolias or magnolia soulangeana were initially bred by French horticulturist, Etienne Soulange-Bodin, in 1820 at his chateau near Paris. Crossing two types of magnolia both with impressive flowers themselves, his new tree produced in 1826 the spectacular flowers we know today. From France, the hybrid quickly entered cultivation in England and other parts of Europe and also came to the shores of North America.  Over a hundred names varieties are now known.

Magnolias, once established, are easy to grow. They are naturally adapted to areas with cool, moist winter conditions like ours.  If you have a lawn they make a good specimen tree and do well in very large containers. The roots are shallow and don't like to be disturbed once they are established so make sure you pick a good spot to plant them, a place in the garden where they can show off their spreading branch structure. If planted in a lawn  leave a grass-free area bare under the canopy as the fleshy roots can be damaged from constant foot traffic. Most varieties grow about 20-25 ft tall and as wide. Here are some of my favorites.

Of the many cultivars that are commonly seen, I'm always drawn to Alexandrina. Large, tulip-shaped flowers are deep rosy-purple with dark veins outside and white inside. Rustica Rubra is another stunner with deep reddish-purple cup-shaped flowers. The variety we call simply Saucer magnolia is beautiful, too. Planted in a woodland or Asian style garden it's white blooms, pink on the outside, are fragrant like all of the varieties.  Gamble Garden, in Palo Alto, has a beautiful Vulcan variety blooming in their woodland garden. Above the blooming hellebores, their ruby-red flowers completely covered this spreading mature specimen. At 10-12" across, the showy flowers glowed in the late afternoon sun.

Star magnolias or magnolia stellata also make a fine addition to the garden. Much smaller than its cousin this mounding shrubby plant grows only 10-15 ft tall but much wider. Often it is pruned like a small tree to show off the early profusion of striking flowers in white, pink or rose. Star magnolias are valued for their small scale in woodland gardens and are especially beautiful if you can enjoy the early flowering from inside the house.

Deciduous magnolias along with flowering plums are among the earliest showy trees to herald in the new season. Valuable for both their stunning flowers and also their sweet scent they make the late winter garden come alive.
 

cool season flowers, cut flowers, edibles, vegetables, winter color

Flowers, Edibles and Camellias

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Every year the stirrings of early spring excite me. There's even a name for it – spring fever. There are lots of early season plants that can go in right now or you can spend some time planning for later additions to your garden. Both are great ways to kick-start this gardening season.

An article in this month's Sunset magazine talks about the "5- Mile Bouquet". How about a 50-foot bouquet using flowers from your own garden? There are flowers we can grow in every season around here. Who wants to put flowers doused in chemicals and shipped halfway across the world on the table? Plan to use your entire property as a cutting garden. You can have fresh little bouquets year round from your own backyard.

Winter flowering, fragrant sweet peas could be in your vase right now or bright orange and gold calendula. Stock blooms during the winter along with early narcissus. Both are very fragrant. Deer-resistant Sweet Violets are blooming now and smell wonderful in a tiny vase by the kitchen window. Anemone and snapdragons make good cut flowers and will be blooming soon. It's easy to plan ahead for a spring or summer bouquet because there are so many choices but make sure you have aster, scabiosa and gaillardia for those fall arrangements.

This year plan the edible garden around what grows best for you. It's not always cost effective to devote space in your vegetable plot for something that peaks at the same time as it's plentiful at the local farmers market. What makes sense for your taste, time and garden space? Easy to grow edibles like strawberries, blueberries, herbs, lettuces, arugula and peas are delicious freshly picked and don't take up too much room in the garden.

There are ways to make your whole landscaping edible. Fruits, vegetables and herbs can be intermingled with the ornamental shrubs and flowers in the yard. Plant an apple where a crape myrtle was going to go or an artichoke instead of a New Zealand flax. A border of parsley or chives around the flower bed would look and taste great. Or maybe French pole beans to grow up a bamboo arbor you tied together yourself. Take advantage of your entire property to incorporate your favorite edibles.

Now is a good time to pick out a camellia for that morning sun or shady spot that needs a shrub with year round good looks. Looking at pictures of camellia flowers in a catalog is nice but seeing them in person is even better. What better way to choose the perfect one? If you're partial to vivid flowers, Nuccio's Bella Rossa is right up your alley. An abundance of huge formal, crimson red blooms open slowly over a long period for an especially long bloom season. This brilliant camellia is believed to bring wealth if planted at the entrance to your home as are other red flowering plants.

A great camellia to espalier on a trellis is a sasanqua variety called Fairy Blush. Deep pink buds open to apple blossom tinted blooms with a sweet fragrance. Growing to a compact 4-5 feet this plant is perfect for a small courtyard or patio.

Then there's the soft blush-pink, semi-double flowers of Magnoliaeflora that can be the prized plant of the winter garden. It's deer resistant and the showy flowers are good for cutting. It would make a great privacy screen and looks natural in the woodland garden.

 requiring a regular watering schedule during the first growing season to establish a deep, extensive root system. Provide well drained soil, rich in organic matter. Feed with an acid fertilizer after bloom. Keep roots cool with a thick layer of mulch and prune them in spring after flowering.