travel

Well, I don't know what happened, time flies when you are growing plants. We had a great season, weather was excellent and the plants were all wonderful this year. I have great women helping me and we really produced! June brought the usual exhausted planting of the MUMS. The timing on that crop is so painful when we are all planted out and need to crank out another 4000 pots!

Those honey bees really outdid themselves, the original hive number 1 produced over 60 lbs. of honey! The new split spent all season getting themselves organized. They've all been put to bed with their fall feeding and winter doors installed.

I am getting ready for a trip to Lake Atitlan. This year I am committing to a Spanish intensive class and have been priming here with the local adult ed. This is the year I am branching out of present tense! Por fin!

Bye for now, it's off to see what's happening with the election.

And then there were two.

Big excitement at the farm this weekend! Sitting by the big window on Saturday morning, I was taking the first slow morning I've had in about 3 months, I saw that the bee hive was exceptionally busy. Well I thought, it's a warm sunny morning, all the trees are blooming, my plan was to put on the honey super that I had meant to get on earlier in the week. The bees had another plan. I was out in the barn getting the super and was deluged by bees within moments of opening the boxed and plastic wrapped super of drawn comb. I knew right then that something was up, ran back to the hive and sure enough they had swarmed. I had missed the moment! I wandered around a bit looking for the bees and saw them up in the apple tree that Frank had carefully pruned for me this winter.

I ran and got the ladder, suited up and tried to figure out how I was going to catch this gang. Of course I don't have a tall enough ladder so had to do some gymnastics to get up high enough. Climbed up at least 4 times with unsuccessful attempts to catch them. After about 2 hours I finally got them settled into a new home and as of today it looks as if they will stay. Pure luck, that I was home, that I noticed the ruckus at the old hive and that they were in a place where they could be caught!

It took me another 2 hours to calm down enough to continue with my day! What a thrill, perched up in a tree with bees buzzing all around! What a miracle! What a great weekend!

Here's the first truck loading of the season, heading off to Wayland, Massachusetts. Orders are flying out quickly, it is always amazing that 8 months of preparation leads up to these 3 or 4 weeks of plant insanity! The weather is cooperating and that is great.

Check this out, I know just a lowly petunia but so pretty, it just about glows : Merlin Blue Morn, I love it!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was gorgeous! I have Sunday watering duty but the day was so pretty I didn't mind. It was doubly nice because the predicted rain never materialized. That's good, we need lots of sunny weekends this year for May! It is still running cold here, only 40 in the morning and yesterday with a brisk breeze off the ocean. We made a field trip to a local retail garden center last week and it was an amazing sight. (I don't get out much.) I watched a woman at a giant table of beautiful blooming geraniums as she specifically selected the smallest, no bloom, one measly bud! What is that about?

My darling daughter made me the most delectable lunch for Mother's Day. Home-made spelt biscuits with rhubarb & strawberry compote, sauteed kale with vidalia onion and some of our fresh eggs with a dash of fresh sage and gruyere, YUM! I ate 3 biscuits! We had a glorious long walk along the ocean. Then came home and I went off to spray the greenhouses! Not my favorite job but a necessity.

Truck runs all this week will give us the needed space to finish up the last plantings, this spring has gone really fast. Now compacted into 3 weeks of shipping because the weather has been so cold. The dang heat is still running!

eucomis

Eucomis comosa, this is a great plant, so exotic looking and the pale green color marked with burgundy is so rich. I potted this up in mid January, a tad early but the bulbs I had kept over were starting to sprout so I figured I'd follow the timing they wanted. Needless to say it's a bit early for New England spring. I wanted to put it on my counter for a recent dinner party and had it all prettied up and sitting there late afternoon. I went out to cut some quince blossoms and when I came back inside ---what was that smell? Ugh, something of a cross between propane gas and rotting fruit. You guessed it, Eucomis aka Pineapple Lily, definitely an out door plant, now gracing my back door porch. P.U. I got the original bulb maybe in 2000 at the old Heronswood in Washington State. I made field trips to the nursery for several years while my daughter was in school in Olympia and combined visits to my brother and sister-in-law on the Olympic penisula. What a great plant spot!!!! It was such a great place to visit to see all the gardens and so many interesting plants from so many far flung places. Now we do get to hear from Dan Hinkley in Garden Design and that is great but the nursery and gardens were so personal it was as if you were walking around with an old friend.

Of course, one great thing about the gloomy Washington fall is that the moist overcast lighting is perfect for viewing and photographing plants! I also remember coming around a corner into a garden with a large patch of Phygelius New Sensation with a backdrop of Fuchsia m. aurea absolutely glowing in the rain. It's raining now reminding me of these glorious flowers in the mist.

Rough Week

That's Katie with the last hanger to go on the truck! It's been a rough week at wit's end, we had torrential rain at the beginning of the week, that is always hard to work in. The greenhouse is like a giant drum that amplifies the pelting sounds. Plants still looking good, the sun came out just in time to avoid stretching. The mega pansy hangers went to their spring home in Manchester NH at Anheuser Busch . I know they will be very happy there! They are in a cold pocket so they don't change the hangers out for the summer until June.

Shipping has begun and not a moment too soon, there are a bunch of zinnia seedlings waiting patiently for their potting. I like to try for a sunny stretch when they get planted so they can take right off and not stretch. The vines are all planted too. We had a cold night on Wednesday and some of the tips of the dahlias took a hit despite being covered. That hurts but they had to be outside to make way for more tender seedling transplants.

Tragedy struck in the chicken coop on Wednesday night also, we thought all the girls were closed in but 2 of the wiley RI reds never came in to roost. Amelia heard a blood curdling cry in the night and sure enough one is missing and the second one has a big tear at the base of her comb. She was milling around under the forsythia dazed and confused. I put her in the coop and fed her some moist mash and she did seem a bit better by bedtime last night. That combined with Tiny, our hen pecked underchicken who also requires special feeding, has lent drama to the formerly soothing existence of the backyard chickens. Ah the trials of agriculture! That's Tiny on the left and poor Henrietta with a head ache on the right.

Sunday morning, we've had a beautiful week of weather, the plants are growing like crazy, dahlias are budded already, that's good because they get booted out this week, ready or not!
We have a skadzillion plants waiting to pot with little space left so this is the crunch time.

I taught my first full NIA class last weekend, it was fun and in the words of my lovely teacher Casey, I wasn't afraid to suck or blow, and there were a few rough transitions but we all got sweaty and felt good afterward! More on nia later. Very tough to fit my dancing into a full schedule with spring but it is necessary for my balance.

Back to the plants, we've done a great job with our pinching this year and plants are looking full and well branched, starting to sell now and that is great. In this business the money streams out on a daily basis and only really flows back in for 2-3 months, it's always exciting when the direction reverses to incoming.

This is a picture of Mora masquerading as Amelia. She was out feeding the chickens on a cool morning. Smacking her lips, hmm was she eating chickens or feeding chickens. bad dog.

This is the marvelous A team at lunch, they didn't have enough fiddly little work to do with seeding all day so had to make origami cranes! See how pleased we all are with our handiwork, which is going to go to Kathy's bridal shower as favors! (left to right, Kathy, Katie, Amelia)

As you can see in the background there is more snow! Imagine 7 days ago and snow. I am just praying that this pattern of weather on the weekends is not going to continue into May, we really need a good May this year for all the garden centers.

Plants are growing beautifully this year, a good mix of sunny bright weather with a few cloudy, rainy bits tossed in intermittently. Sunday evening, a fine cool mist is falling and I have warned the pansies and linaria that they are about to be booted outside so we can use the space! I always have the remay at hand in case they need a little blanket for a cool night. Lucky they are so rugged. We are all amazed that we are on week 14, doesn't seem possible

Spring Sheros

That's part of the spring shero team, Kathy was missing. These women are responsible for all the planting and hauling and watering and feeding! They are doing a great job and the plants look wonderful this year. There's a picture of the trio on the right, Amelia, Katie and Kathy. We have a ton of plants planted and another ton waiting on the side, full swing and not too many weeks before we are in crazy plant mode!

I have a pot of quinoa simmering on the stove, breakfast ya know. Mora is having her morning nap and soon we'll be off to the seedlings. The wind finally let up, after a week end of torture, you could just stand and watch the fuel gauges go down! I'm hoping we're into a warming trend now and let March go out like a lion, be gone with you.

seedlings

This is the time of year when we are constantly rotating plants. Stick cuttings and hurry them along so the next batch can go under the mist. Sow seeds and hurry them on for the next week's list! There's a small backlog of plants waiting for potting at the moment but I was waiting to turn the heat on in the next greenhouse. Fuel costs are killing us this year. The plants look great and stock is healthy and fully recovered from the December freezing incident that happened while I was in Guatemala.



Ahhhh, Guatemala, just thinking about it soothes me. We had great adventures this trip, night time cross country buses, boat ride down the Rio Dulce, amazing meals at the Rosa in Livingston. When we got back to Atitlan we found an apartment and were able to go to market and get all the pineapple, avocado, fresh beautiful veggies and fruits that we wanted. Our little yard was beautifully tended by an elderly man. We had orange, tangerine, lemon, lime and grapefruit trees.

This year the dahlias came in looking the best I've ever seen them. They get started early so they can be already blooming by the time they go in the garden in May. They are easy but hog a lot of space. If the weather cooperates we can get them outside with remay and then replant that space with more tender annuals. The bananas and colocasias came in looking very fine this year also. Last year they were shipped during a freeze and they were all a bust. Well back to the work at hand.

weather spirits

Here's the team on Monday morning with hundreds of dahlias waiting for potting! By midday this house was half full of the little budding lovelies. My marvelous helpers from left to right, Amelia, Katie, and Kathy.




Amelia and Minnow at lunch time!


Now poor Katie is sick with the flu and we're all fighting it off.

Mondays

Week 9, in full swing here. Monday in plant land, lots of seeds to sow this week. We are going to start our greens too, day has dawned sunny and grand. The week is mapped out and there is a ton of work to do. Lucky for me, the dream trio will be arriving soon to get things rolling. Of course there are a slew of pictures to take and get onto the web site and the desk surface is starting to disappear under waiting piles of paperwork. It must be spring in green land.
Since the house has been finished my dog has taken to trying out different napping sites, unusual for her and quite funny for us. We also had our first dinner party with the new kitchen!

Bring it on!

Spring is around the corner, I can feel it in my bones. The days are getting longer, the daily late afternoon dog walk is no longer in the dusk! The pansies are all planted and growing nicely, so far so good. Grasses are all divided and rooting out, the greenhouse critters are all at bay for now. This may be the last resting Sunday for a while, I am enjoying it fully NOW!

Wind makes me crazy.

Wind blowing hard all night long, sounds like a freight train running at top speed directly at the front of the little propagation house. I don't sleep well on nights like this, waiting for the alarm to go off, wondering if I will know how to fix what ever is broken when the alarm goes off. It is just howling. You know it is cold when the arborvitae are black green, standing like frozen soldiers and the rhododendron are all hunched in, curled leaves dancing around. My favorite oak tree is waving and rattling like a Shaker dancer. I wonder what life is like when hard weather doesn't make you fret and fume. This is the part of horticulture/agriculture that you don't learn about until you live it. We are at the mercy of the elements. You have to do your work to plan, build and maintain accordingly and then it is up to faith.
It's Monday and that means seed day. Any seed crops for week 7 get started today, we fill our seedling trays with a peat perlite germination mix, get them nice and moist and then in goes the seed. These weeks that are early in the season are the nice because we still have space! We have some perennial plugs arriving later and will be opening up the big greenhouses for the planting season. That means cleaning, fixing, and getting all the systems ready to roll.

Getting Started

Here we go, my first entry into the bloggosphere. I've called this plant rants but you know I'll be branching out from there. No pun intended. I've been a professional grower for too many years to mention until I know you better. Right now we're in the greenhouse propagating our vegetative plants and planting seedlings. Actually, Katie is doing all that because I am still repairing all the systems that broke when I was in Guatemala and one of my house sitters let the greenhouse freeze in December. Really, just my huge collection of Coleus got blasted so it was an opportunity to update the gang AND it was my fault because of the crappy back door latch and the malfunctioning alarm system.
This is the apple tree out the dining room window. It has been snowing, cloudy and misty for days now. Great for the mist bench because the little rooting cuttings don't have to fight the sun drying and excess heat.