Cool weather plants

It was 38F/3C out there Saturday morning, and the wind was blowing–quite a contrast to the weather we’ve had in the past two weeks. It almost felt like snow.  I had my gloves on and a winter hat. I intended to start a bunch of cool weather seeds, but all I ended up doing was breaking up boxes I get from the business.  I decided to wait until it warmed up later in the day to start arugula, purple mizuna, ho mi z mustard greens, Garnet Giant mustard, red komatsuna, Da Cheong Chai, Hon Tsai Tai, mitsuba, and about five kinds of radicchio. I should have started the radicchio in March, but business has kept me from doing as much in the garden as I would have liked. I still have tons of orders to fill, for which I am very glad! Saturday, though, is my absolute day off, my day for full-bore gardening or just lying around reading (which I also did–I took a break from reading At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America to start the fantasy novel Dark Sleeper, which is amusing, cosy, and somewhat slow-moving). I’ve got a bunch more seed packets to look through and see what I can start right now. I know I will be growing more Elka poppies this year so I can collect seeds. I would like to share this one with the other Crone-lovers out there. I’ve also got the two varieties of P. somniferum var. setigerum to start for seeds. I’ll have to tie up or cover the flowers to keep the seeds true, though, denying the bees their treat. They really love poppies.

I ended up doing a lot of pruning Saturday, especially of old wood, which seems like the perfect thing to do on Saturn’s day. I had a new anvil pruner to take for a test drive. There’s a sort of hibiscus bush that became overgrown that I cut back drastically to see if it will flower again. I cut all the dead stalks off the wormwoods and mugworts. I cut the dead branches off the multiflora rose that’s climbing up a Norway maple and then put up a wire arch for it to hang out on. That arch leads into the “way-back” garden, where last year I planted shallots and neglected them to oblivion (I have this problem of plant abuse…). Well, they’re back–a bunch of them made it through the summer. So I am going to leave them there and see what happens. Motherwort, which grows in spades in that area because it loves the shade and I help it along by sprinkling the seed heads around in the fall, is all over in the shallot rows. This year I will harvest and dry some of the motherwort for “Justin Case.” I then went on to cut back the water sprouts on the tulip tree and dragged all these plant bones back to the brush pile, which I have at one corner of the property just to annoy the anal people back there, the one whose dog came and bit Blackie. They have hacked away at the tree on the corner of the property so that it grows at nearly a 90 degree angle into my yard (which is fine). Inadvertently they have created a beautiful tree form. What does not destroy us, etc.

Some of the seedlings I transplanted yesterday look like they won’t make it. Others are grabbing hold already. Sunday I got the rest of the herbs I bought in the ground, put up the bean/pea netting again, and planted a ton of seeds: Harlequin marigold, Day of the Dead marigold (I am determined to get seeds from this thing), P. bracteatum (great red poppy), Mimulus luteus (blood-drop mimulus), vervain (forgot to stratify them, but thought I’d see if they’d germinate without it), the two subspecies of Papaver setigerum (the so-called wild poppy), Elka poppy, ma huang, a variety of extra-strength oregano called Dost, archangel, and eight types of foxgloves, just because I like them (and the bumblebees love them). While I was planting them, a huge wild turkey landed in the yard and scuffled around like a goofball. Blackie was sitting in the window with his eyes like saucers.

I didn’t get the greens or radicchio planted. I did something else instead: mandrakes!

Last fall I moved all the mandrakes into the basement. I harvested the larger ones and then let the rest of them go as too small to bother with. All winter they got no water or light. Today I went to scavenge the potting soil out of those pots. This is some of what I found:

Not only are these roots alive, but they are breaking dormancy.  That large one is over a foot long. So I put these and the others I dug up into large pots with fresh soil. They’ll be living on the patio behind the peas and beans, which will give them good shade and protection–and my attention. Last year they were relegated to the area between the silver maple and the strawberries, and I  ended up kind of ignoring them. They were eaten by slugs and drowned in excessive rain and got algae on the soil and so on.

I also found a pot with a very large root in it that I had missed when I was bringing pots down into the basement last fall. It sat out on the patio all winter, and yet the root was still alive. That was a real eye-opener. When I had to have a bunch of them on the patio when I first moved in, they were killed by very cold temps, I think it was 7F/-14C for at least one night. They turned into mush. But apparently they are more resistant to cold than I thought.

This plant is really something. Every time I think I have got it figured out, it shows me another side of itself. I knew, for instance, that despite its roots being very brittle, I could still press the hardened soil off them when harvesting them or transplanting them. I knew they went dormant at the drop of a hat. If you recall, some of these same plants were flowering when I had to take them inside last year. That’s not a good time in a plant’s life for them to experience a shock. It takes a lot of energy to flower. But look how these pulled that energy back in and soldiered through the dark, dry winter in the basement. It’s just astounding to me.

This also makes me wonder if perhaps it might actually be better for the plant if it goes dormant for the winter rather than trying to keep it growing and so stressing it to the point where it is covered with aphids. When you’ve got a lot of aphids, you’ve got either a very stressed plant or you’re using too much fertilizer–aphids like weak/tender plant flesh. Their teeth get tired otherwise.:)

I’ll see how these guys do this season. It would be great if some of the larger roots bloomed!