Accidentally Spring

Ah yes, Maryland is currently in its record-breaking run of days in the 60's and 70's.

AND I'M LOVIN' EVERY FLIPPING MINUTE OF IT!!!

I received a wonderful Saturday surprise in the form of the thunderstorms I thought would be all day not starting until after 2:00. So I was able to get out and put in 4 hours of weeding!

I got almost all of the beds weeded!

This is a magical opportunity to be ruthless to weeds with my homi without having to delicately work around the spring flowers that already started sprouting and you're actually not really sure if they're flowers or weeds, so you let them all grow and discover that they are in fact 90% weeds that have gone to seed and multiplied and your entire summer is spent cursing them and yourself and the fact that you have no time to keep up with them.      (Hypothetically, speaking, of course.)

The beds look wonderful, going from this mess in the edibles garden:

To this:

(Still the same white trash junk laying around, but we'll get there.)

Ready for planting!
(And that random green thing popping up in the middle? Just a tuft of kale I planted last spring that has just chilled there all fall and winter. Fabulous.   The green closer to the house is cilantro!! I transplanted some last year and it is taking hold in the garden where it's supposed to be! Once it really takes off, I'll be able to pull it out of the flower gardens where I've let it go because...well, because - cilantro! Hello?!)

I also finished the wildflower border which is always the worst to weed. Between 2 hours last Saturday and at least another hour today, I finally got down to where the flowers end and the hostas start. Yikes, it's a lot of weeds!

Looks great!

Should have taken a before picture. It was covered - covered - in little seedlings.

What seedlings, you ask?

Ohhhhh, you know how I love my fresh cilantro and let it go to seed so it'll keep coming back??
Yeaaaah, sometimes those seeds don't stay confined inside of a sidewalk and the next thing you know your entire wildflower bed across the sidewalk is covered in cilantro seedlings. Looooovely.

So I very aggressively got in there and weeded the tar out of that thing. Not sure if any wildflower seeds/roots/whatever are still left in there to come back, but we shall see!


Meanwhile, the hydrangeas and roses put out buds over a week ago and today I found the leaves starting to open.

Uh oh!

I mean, if it stays like this, fabulous!

But it's February. Remember, little earth...it's February. You're aware of this, right?
So if you're going to be all "Wooooo hoooooo!!! It's Spring! That's SO dope!", be forewarned that if you pull an old switcheroo on us and freeze my little buds, I'm coming for you, winter 2017...I'm coming.

A few daffodils in the back look like they're going to pop!

The tulip border is looking incredible!
Incredibly crowded again. Oops!

All the little crocuses in bloom and tulips and daffodils poking up as well! (Sometimes poking through others. You weren't supposed to be here!!!)

Love the spiral the tulip leaves make...

And then of course there are those delightful snapdragons.
The annuals that apparently aren't annuals. In fact, I cut away the brown so that the brand new green leaves growing can emerge! What?!

Before:

            After:

               (oh, and they're budding!)

So much for my perfect plan of having the bare bed filled in with all the emerging spring bulbs and then having the perennials come up at just the perfect time to cover the dying spring greens. [Sigh]

Well, more green for all!

I looked at photos from last year and we appear to be at least 2, possibly 3 weeks ahead of last year as far as what's popping up! Craziness! 

Apparently, it's Spring!

Oh...except for one particular fellow who's a bit confused and apparently thinks it's Christmas.

The camellia...a winter bloomer (we're talking dead winter: mine bloom in later November / December although probably with more sun they could go longer).

And yet here it is like, "ooh, ooh, pick me! I'll bloom early like the other guys too!!" Uh huh. Pat, pat...gooood, little bush.

Maybe it's because he's new. 

We planted one on either side of the stoop in the fall because it's so shaded and after killing at least 3 Laurels, we figured these could perhaps do nicely; provide beautiful, dark green all winter and yay flowers in the middle of the blahness!

So perhaps he's just confused because his first winter in his new home was a spectacularly un-blossomful one for him and his brother (but it was their first year; they were putting down roots and figuring things out and discovering that when you're out of mom and dad's house and on your own, laundry does have to be done periodically and dishes don't just magically put themselves back into the cabinets all clean. So come on, I cut some slack and figured they'd be all caught up by next winter! Or now. Oh...ok, sure! I'm all for new flowers!) He's the only one blooming. His little partner is not. So yet again, I appear to have gotten the {"special"} plant. Poor guy.

Welp, here we go into another, albeit crazy early, Spring with the plants taking off and doing their own thing!   CAN-NOT wait!!!!

More Winter Flowering...

Today we have a guest poster! 
Please welcome my coworker, garden plot partner, and future vandalism gardening partner-in-crime sharing the story of the office amaryllis...

My earnest and enthusiastic coworker has, I think, a bit of an elevated opinion about my gardening skills, which tend more toward the “let’s see what happens… hey, it worked!” side of things than the “I know what I’m doing, and it worked because of that” end of the spectrum. Still, I will admit that things do tend to work out for the most part, such as when we received an amaryllis bulb at work in December of 2015.

Typically, when contractors or consultants send us Christmas gifts, it’s along the lines of chocolate, cookies, or treats – consumables and temporary items. For whatever reason, one of them gave us an amaryllis bulb in a pot two Christmases ago. I claimed it for my desk (logical, since I’m the only one not sitting next to a window, very smart), and we got a month or two of lovely red flowers out of it.

Typically, I believe the thing to do with Christmas plants after they finish blooming is to toss them, but I’d never had an amaryllis before (and I dislike getting rid of plants [ as does the Accidental Gardener]), so I looked up what to do with it so it would bloom next year. The instructions are pretty precise, but I take many gardening instructions as suggestions [ as does the Accidental Gardener], so I figured I’d give it a go and see what happened.

I read that you have to kill it off around late summer so that it can be dormant over fall and revive in winter to bloom again. How hard can it be to kill a plant, right? We do it all the time, unintentionally, can’t be too difficult, right?

Wrong.

I stopped watering the bulb around August. The leaves started yellowing and drooping after 2-3 weeks (which is stupidly long for a large plant in a small pot), and I eventually just folded them up, stuffed the whole pot and plant in a thick bag, brought it home, and put it in a dark corner by the a/c vent to cool it down and deprive it of light and water. Every few weeks I’d check on it, and the dang thing would still be hanging on, little traces of green and yellow in the slowly dying leaves.

Once the weather got cold (-ish, this has been the warmest winter we’ve had in a while, I think), I put it outside under the porch to complete the kill. I know, I know, it’s not hyper-controlled humidity, ultra-darkness, or pinpoint temperature control, but…. Plants have been growing for millions of years, perfect isn’t necessary. As they say, out of sight, out of mind, and I promptly forgot all about the undead amaryllis.

In late December, a warning went off in my head to check on the bulb. It was just about time to bring it in, warm it up, water it, and give it sunlight to fool it into thinking it was spring and time to bloom again. I went down under the porch, grabbed the bag, opened it up and…..

The dang thing was still alive.

Four months of no water. Three months of no light, and two months of wildly fluctuating temperatures (including down into freezing a time or two), and the dang thing was still alive. The leaves had died back to about 1” above the bulb, but that last one inch was just as green and happy as could be.

The instructions said that, when it was ready for spring, you’d see a flower stalk forming in the center. There was no sign of new growth, but since time was running out for it to flower during the winter, I brought it in, added more dirt to the pot, put it in the window, and watered it sparingly. After a week or so, new leaves started pushing up out of the center, and I figured I’d messed things up enough that flowers wouldn’t happen. I don’t mind greenery in the middle of winter, though, so I kept watering it and enjoyed the fan of tropical leaves.

Four weeks later, darn if a little flower head didn’t sprout out the side of the bulb, and start a race to the top. As if determined to make up for lost time, it took just over two weeks to grow about two feet tall and throw out some beautiful winter flowers...

I see you!

Starting to bloom! And higher than the filing cabinets :-D

It makes us so happy that this is what everyone
in the office sees when walking upstairs!

So yeah, it turned out well, I look like I have the faintest clue what I’m doing, and we get another year of bright cheerful flowers in the middle of the oddest dang winter I’ve seen. Here’s to the undead amaryllis living for another year. 


Update:
The post above was written last week. When I got into the office Monday morning, flowers 3 and 4 had opened! Yay! 
But no yay...because the whole stalk and several leaves were face-planted onto my coworker's desktop :-(

It had a thin strip of flesh attached which acted like a hinge when I lifted it and, I kid you not, crazy zombie flower stalk unloaded (thankfully into the pot!) probably the entire 1/4 cup of water I'd given it on Friday! Like some sad bleed, out it poured from the hollow stalk.
Now I know nothing about amaryllis and very little about plants in general, but aside from bamboo and cacti...is that normal?!

My coworker dubbed it the "water vampire". Sucking the life out of the rest of the plant and life-supporting dirt.
And where did that get you, freak?! A giant head too heavy for your own good and SPLAT! 

So sad.

I snapped it off and put it in a cup of water to enjoy for another day or two.

Unless it continues living up to its reputation of sucking the cup dry, storing it in its bulbous body and refusing to die for yet another year.


Update #2:
Coworker reads the following:
"Brighter sunlight creates the best coloration and a more proportionate plant" (read: shorter stem) LOL oops!

And:
"If they grow too tall, you may cut them: Amaryllis are among the best, most long-lasting of cut flowers."

Yaaaay! Live, you unattached, zombie, vampire, freak! Live and bring us sunshine and color and happiness!!

Let Me Out!!

Well yes, it WAS 70, but quickly dropped back down to the 30's. As I look out my window right now it's lightly snowing. Joy.
(but the sun is still out because that's how we roll here in Maryland)

I walked into the office the other day and found the fern in my "fairy garden" sneaking his way out underneath the lid...

I hear ya, little guy. That's exactly how I feel..."get me out of here! I need sunshine! I need warmth! Stretch. Reeeeeeach!"

Feel like I've been in a box for 3 months and it's time to get out!

There is hope. This weekend is supposed to be nearly 60 and you better believe I will be outside getting a taste of the gardens and soaking in the smell of dirt and springtime trying to show itself!


In the meantime, we stay trapped and bundled up just waiting until we feel we can "alive" again.

"They can put us in a jar, but they'll never take our FREEDOOOOOOM!!!! 
Well...until they decide we're too tall for the jar and so trim us down and we have to start over. aaaawwww"

Poor little fern.

Peanuts - Part 2

In my last post I described finding out how peanuts grow underground...from peanuts! Novel, idea.

For that reason, the rotten peanuts from my first harvested batch were thrown away instead of composted. However, I completely forgot in my next batch.

I realized it a day or so later and mentioned to my husband: "Oh dear I composted the rotten peanuts, so I need to go scoop those out so that we don't have compost peanut plants spread throughout our gardens!"

He smiled, turned, and asked if I saw the one the squirrel buried.

I look at him horrified...oh no! I never once thought about the squirrels!! They're going to steal them from the compost bin and bury them all over the yard and we'll have peanut plants everywhere and oh no, oh no! Etc., etc.

Pause, while I back-up a bit.
In our yard we have, um..."special" squirrels. They are seriously, hilariously, neurotic. One particular little runt with a scruffy tail I named "Hammy" (like from 'Over the Hedge') I would watch him ruuuuuun all the way around the yard, dart up this tree, stop halfway, race back down, across the ground, dart up another, race down to the ground, spin around, chase his tail in circles, look like he was very badly doing a "bob and weave" tactic across the yard to avoid gunfire... hi-LAR-ious!
I even saw one fall off a fence! Like I said: special!


Ok, so, while I'm in angst about how we'll NEVER find all the peanuts they bury, husband continues to smile calmly and says, "Not when you see this one. Come. Time for a little journey."

He grabs a flashlight and out the front door we go to the edge of the driveway (there's a small rectangle island of grass between the driveway, tulip border, front stoop and bed against the house) and right there next to it he shows me this:

I died.

So, so, so funny!

Our poor little, "special" squirrels tried so hard to bury a treasure they found. Oh how excited they must have been...look at these rare gems that were delivered right to our playground! How yummy...how perfect! I'm going to hide it some place special where no one will find it!

Pat, pat...well, done little fellow, well done.

Peanuts!!!!

This post is long overdue...while much of our garden was quite disappointing this year yield-wise and long after everything else had ceased being anything resembling productive or plant-like, these guys pressed on! A true success story!!


Last spring my garden plot partner (in crime...?!) told me she wanted to do peanuts in the garden.
What the...?! We can grow those here? (I'm thinking Georgian or South American plantations or something!)

So we did!

Starting in two neat little rows.

They actually grew quite splendidly, filling out (and overflowing and clawing their way over neighboring plants!) the bed quite abundantly!


(Here they are mid-summer
 almost filling the bed which
 they shared with a few tomatoes
 in the back and the half-crazed,
 hungry zombie-like...um, I mean,
 the gentle crawling, ever
 spreading toward their friends
 in a utopian community  radish plants.)




I knew nothing about how peanuts grow, but apparently they drop little shooters and at the end of each grows a peanut! How exciting!

She was diligent about researching the perfect time to harvest...when the plants turn yellow and not before. Ok, sounds great.
Well, like so many things that refused to die this fall (!!) the peanuts stayed green forever.
And then I left the country and she was insanely busy and suddenly it was like the end of November and we were harvesting very brown peanut plants.

So what's supposed to happen when they're yellow is that you loosen the dirt, grab the plant and gently pull...all those little "fingers" and their danging peanuts will just come along with the plant  - how nice!

Ok, but when it's dead? Yeah, all those little fingers just fall off and so commences on your hands and knees in mud (we'd gotten some good rain) trying to dig out hundreds of lost peanuts.

(sidenote: we're moving the peanuts to a new location next year because we're all about crop rotation, however we have a strong suspicion that we will actually have two peanut beds: the one we plant intentionally and the ones left behind in the dirt that will come up and choke the tomatoes and other plants we have planned for that bed!)

Nightmare harvesting aside...you pull up these plants and there are peanuts! Actual, real life peanuts!!
(I mean, I know, I know, "Well, what did you expect when you planted peanuts?"...but, but, but...peanuts!!!)

An entire 6'x6' or so bed of peanuts! We had 3 trash bags full of peanut plants!

We split the "babysitting" and each hung a bunch up in cooler spaces to dry.

(Remember, they're supposed to be conveniently connected to the plant like the ones pictured at the left, however, since we'd waited too long, we had an abundance of loose peanuts...so how do you dry them?! Well I save citrus bags because they're great for storing/hanging/drying bulbs and so ta da! I made a peanut hammock! :-D)

Then after a few weeks you wipe the dirt of really well (does not work as well as one might hope) and then roast them in the oven and voila! Peanuts! Delicious, real life peanuts!!
That we grew!!

If you can't tell, I'm slightly excited!
They look like peanuts.

They taste like peanuts.
They are peanuts!
And we grew them!!



I think this might be our most successful crop yet out of anything we've grown for 2 years!
(Nothing will ever top the abundance of strawberries and green peppers that first year...that was before I came into the garden plot picture; hence why it's only gone downhill from there.)

Yay, peanuts!

Tune in next time for a pretty fantastic story about peanuts accidentally ending up where they're not supposed to...

Peeks of Spring!

Tuesday was 70 degrees.    SEVENTY!!!!

I had been seeing little friends poke their little green heads up in the tulip border and so it was the perfect day...get out there to pull weeds so the bed was beautifully clean and ready for blooming!
Oh it felt sooooo good to be outside like that - so warm and being back in the dirt. Ahhhhhhhh.

Not only are the bulbs shooting little green tips up, but one of the crocuses is blooming!! There, amidst the weeds, actually blooming!!

The bed with all its winter weeds...

And as I pulled weeds around the still-green plants that I was sure would die back so that I only have spring bulbs coming up in the bed in the spring, I found little bulbs trying to poke their way up under them. Oh lovely.

When I want something to stay green and hardy and fill a bed, it dies.
When I want something to die back to a stub all winter so that I can have a clean bed for spring, it stays and greens and fills and overtakes and confuses.
I can't win!

But look at them all popping!

Well, it is now cleared and clean and beautiful and ready for a glory of crocuses and tulips and whatever else I planted and forgot about!!

Seed Order Prep

I keep alternating between "I'm so busy, it's nice to have a few months garden-free" and "OH MY WORD CAN IT PLEASE BE SPRING SO I CAN GARDEN??!!"

The latter is becoming more frequent. Especially when garden plot partner brought seed catalogs into work. Oh no. We were goners.
An estimated $130 later and we realize we probably need to reel it in a bit!

So hopefully in the next few weeks we'll finalize the {smaller} order and seeds here we come! (Or, actually, here they come...?)

Meanwhile we do have gardening work to do in the form of a bit of a craft.
What are these little cuties, you ask?!

Seed pots, of course!!

How genius is that?! She found this idea online and thus began our hoarding of toilet paper and paper towel rolls to cut into little seed starter pots. Perfect size!

Just need to get crafting here soon so we have enough.

I'm almost as excited about the little pots as I am about what will {hopefully} grow out of them!!

Coooome on spring!