Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day March

It’s been Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day again, so it’s high time for me to come up with my post.

The weather having been unusually mild so far, spring has taken hold of the garden. Compared to other years, plants and flowers are about one month ahead. When I look down into the village where they are not so exposed to the cold winds as we on our hill, they are even two more weeks ahead from us, with tulips and daffodils being in full bloom.

Those of you who have already visited, must have noticed that I’m very fond of hellebores. One reason is that they still look very decorative after blooming. With other flowers blossoms fade, making them look sad and forlorn, but look at what has happened to this helleborus niger: blushing all over the place! Later on the dark green foliage will cover everything up, and thus make a great background for the rose growing in front of it.

The crocuses are almost gone now. I’ve cheated a little: these pictures were taken a week ago, but I simply had to take them in because at the weekend there was not enough sun for the petals to open. These light blue ones are my favourite. My dream is having them spread all over the garden one day. However, they are difficult to find in garden centers because most people seem to prefer the bigger varieties. So I’ll have to propagate them myself. If there is something you learn when you have a garden, it’s patience ….

Most of my daffodils are still trying to grow fast enough to get past the slugs (I have mentioned them already this year, haven’t I?), only the little tete-a-tetes are blooming so far, presenting little bushels of yellow under trees and shrubs. For some reason they only grow half the height from those potted ones you can buy everywhere right now. Maybe it’s because the bulbs are deeper in the earth than they are in a pot — so it’s probably just an optical illusion.Finally some more blue, my favourite colour. The hepaticum still looks somewhat forlorn under the gooseberry shrub, but I’m looking forward to it spreading out in the next years. The violets are doing their best right now, pushing up innumerable blossoms, and thus creating the image of little soft cushions. They are ordinary, but very pretty, wild flowers, that you can see everywhere in the woods right now. I’ve got two more varieties in my garden, however, they bloom later in the year. One with dark leaves and light blue blossoms and the other one with white blossoms.

Where in the world is Giekau?

Well, Giekau is a tiny Village in Schleswig-Holstein, which is the most northern state of Germany. Being located at Lake Selent and close to the Baltic Sea (here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal featuring the region), the climate is rather mild (zone 8 is what I found somewhere, but I’m not too sure if these zones are all the same internationally). Winters usually don’t go below -20°C, summers are rarely hotter than 30°C.

…and what can you do there?

Gardening, of course. In our rich, heavy soil almost anything grows from apple trees to violets as long as it tolerates some frost. As summers tend to be a mixture of sun, wind, rain, warmth and cold some veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers are best grown in a greenhouse (which I don’t have) however, lots of other fruits and vegetables thrive under these conditions with very little help.

Also, the area is great for relaxing. The beaches nearby are not spectacular, but neither are they overcrowded. Some are ideal for collecting fossils or minerals (here a flintstone lined with crystal), as the whole of Schleswig-Holstein is basically the rubbish the glaciers left after the ice ages. Therefore you find rocks that have come all the way from Scandinavia littered on the beaches.
If you don’t like the sea, there are plenty of lakes around too. The landscape is marked by soft hills, making it ideal for easy hiking or cycling tours (if you don’t mind the wind).

And of course bird watchers will find this an interesting region. Right now thousands of wild geese are resting here on their way north. Behind our house herons are crowding up to feed on the little fish that are coming up the creek from the lake. Most spectacular are of course the White Tailed Eagles that breed around the lake and sometimes even have a look into our gardens whether the children have left the rabbits out ….

Those who like more action would have to go to the bigger cities, which are rare in Schleswig-Holstein. The capital, Kiel, is famous for Kiel Week, a great international sailing event. Lübeck with its historic town center is probably more widely known, not least for its marzipan. The next major city is Hamburg, which, of course, is not part of Schleswig-Holstein, but only a one and a half hour drive away from us.

(This is probably one of the last articles that will end up on Jodi’s list. Thanks for starting it, Jodi.)

What Happened to the Crocuses?

That was my horrified thought when I had a look at those presented in my last post. Not one single blossom was to be seen anymore. Vanished. Completely. So much for never having enough crocuses in my garden …

Suspecting them before but without proof, now I’m sure: it was the slugs. As a result of the mild winter, the garden is full of baby slugs that are having a good time on my crocuses, particularly the yellow ones for some reason. Usually I’m rather careful with predictions, but it seems quite likely that this won’t be the last time that I lament about my slug problem this year.

Garden Blogger’s Bloomday February

It’s been Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day again, and this time I would like to start with some indoor plants. First of all this phalaenopsis that we received from my grandma as a wedding present now almost sixteen years ago. My grandma having passed away a few years ago, this orchid still keeps thriving, and serves as a remembrance, flowering faithfully every year, even if it is rather pink. For some reason putting it into a room we rarely use and not fussing about with it, but only watering it every once in a while and giving it some (normal) fertilizer once a year has given it a boost: this year there are two stems with flowers.

 

 

 

 

Another specialty I have to offer is this flowering avocado, which my son grew from a seed and which seems to thrive on little light, even less care and the smell of dirty socks that you find in the room of a fifteen-year-old. I’ve always thought, avocadoes don’t flower in captivity, however, it seems, you just have to provide for the right conditions. Also, if you see them in relation to the fruit, avocado blossoms are rather tiny.

As I’m not really good at growing plants indoors, these two count as our great successes. Most of my indoor plants — there are only a few left — have a really hard time in the winter, only recovering when I put them outside on the terrasse in spring. So let’s now have a look outside. The following fotos were taken about a week ago, when we had an unusually mild day. Since then it has cooled down, so that the flowers still look the same — only the bees have remained hidden because of the frost.

First of all the crocusses, the first picture showing them about two weeks ago when they had just begun to show. It’s amazing what a little sun and some warmth can do in such a short time. As to crocusses, I alway find that I haven’t got enough. There’s nothing like a huge spread of crocusses opened widely in the bright sun ….

 

The next picture shows one of my disappointments: snowdrops with snow heather. There was supposed to be a big bushel of snowdrops here to contrast the light pink of the heather. However, either our mole or my over-engaged weeding in the summer has scattered them about so that they look rather forlorn here. Also, the heather has not quite grown a I thought it would. It has suffered quite a bit from last year’s drought.

I’ve already shown some pictures of hellebores before, however, now they are at their best lighting up the dreary surroundings with their bright white. After blooming the petals of this one turn reddish so this plant is an eyecatcher for quite some time. The best of all, the flowers keep well in vases. Together with skimmia blossoms and some ivy leaves they make really elegant bouquets.

 

Finally, here’s a hardy rosemary with tiny blue blossoms. Even if the winter has been unusually mild so far, it’s really amazing how this mediterranean plant manages to flower this early in the year. In fact it has been among the first to bloom. I used to keep my rosemaries potted and carried them indoors, but I have found that this is unnecessary, and even harms them. Planted outside in sheltered places in well-drained ground, they are fairly frost tolerant. In this mild winter I didn’t even need any frost protection (usually my Christmas tree ends up sheltering delicate plants against severe frosts).

Willful Flora

In last Wednesday’s post (What doesn’t grow in my garden) Don of Iowa Garden deplores the fact, that so common plants as aquilegias can’t be persuaded to find a home in his garden while other rare and difficult-to-grow ones are thriving. I’ve often made the same experience that there is no way of forcing plants into your garden. Sometimes moving them around to a more suitable place helps, but some plants simply vanish despite all efforts.

For example Pulsatilla vulgaris simply thrives in my garden, seeding itself all over the place so that I regularly give seedlings away to my parents in whose garden they disappear after a season or two. The same thing happens with catnip, which I almost count among the weeds, however, it can’t be made to settle in my parents’ garden. I’ve made the reverse experience with cosmos flowers, which self-seed in my parents’ garden but which I can’t persuade to stay longer than a season in mine.

Neither the spot they were planted in, nor the conditions of the soil (sandy for Pulsatilla, any for catnip as long as it’s not too acidic), nor unfavourable weather conditions seem to have been the reason for their disappearance. So it is very likely that they were driven out by the presiding inhabitants. Even if I’m no biologist, I’m quite certain that there is quite a lot of interaction between plants that we are hardly beginning to understand. If potatoes can warn their fellow plants of a bug attack by emitting certain chemicals then it is quite possible that other plants have found ways of keeping unwanted neighbours out, for example by influencing the chemisty or microfauna of the soil. I know this for certain of Walnut trees whose decomposing leaves change the chemical makeup of the soil and thus make it difficult for other plants to grow below them. And vegeteble gardeners have learned from experience that some plants make good partners, such as onions and carrots, while others hinder each others’ growth; e.g. it is not such a good idea to have plants of the onion family grow next to peas. So it seems that just like humans plants have found ways of signalling to newcomers that they are not welcome.

In fact, this goes both ways: plants that I don’t like, don’t stand a chance, even if I try to find a nice place for them out of respect for the person that gave them to me. Begonias are to be counted among these. I keep dropping hints towards my mother (who loves them), that giving them to me means their certain death….