Good Scents Gardens

Cut Flower Business Ending

2011-08-22T09:19:00.003-04:00

I decided to take a position as Managing Director of Project Grow and finished the Good Scents flower season in August 2011. I have been involved with Project Grow since the mid 80s, as a gardener, volunteer in numerous positions and board member. When the Managing Director unexpectedly resigned in June, I decided to apply for the position, have since been hired, and started on August 1st.

While it might be possible to do both - I ran Good Scents for the first 6 years while working full time - doing so would defeat the purpose of me stopping the business in the first place. While I love growing flowers and many other things about the business, it is a very time consuming job that leaves no time for any gardening outside of work!

Wet,Wet, Wet

2011-04-24T18:29:00.002-04:00

I got started last Monday this year (April 18th). It has been a cold Spring and wet, wet, wet. There is standing water in the paths at the farm, which is how I informally keep track of how wet the weather is. Between the cold and the constant rain, I have not had many working days. This week is supposed to be wet, too, but maybe the first week of May will be better.

Transplanting Already

2011-02-21T07:01:00.003-05:00

The Lisianthus I started the first week of January have reached transplant size so during the past few days I moved all of them from 200 cell plug trays they were started in, to 12x6 liners. About 75% of them come up and survive this long so that about doubles the amount of space they occupy under the lights. In addition, I've also got seedlings for onions, pimentos, delphiniums, several Camnpanulas and Lady's Mantle, but all of those are still small.

I'm going to move some of this stuff to the greenhouse about the beginning of March, but right now the greenhouse is still unheated and freezing cold.

Another thing I am doing differently this year is I am not forcing lilies for May. I decided that they take up too much greenhouse space, plus the crates are really heavy and too much work to be schlepping them in and out of the greenhouse during hot and cold spells in May. I originally started doing this in hopes of avoiding having to buy flowers in late May, but I ended up buying flowers anyway (a lily stem or two does not create a bouquet, as far as I am concerned). They are nice but given my very limited greenhouse space, they are really costly.

I still plan on buying frozen lily bulbs from Ednie during the summer and planting those in crates, so there will still be lilies out of season in the summer, just no lilies in May.

Seed Swap

2011-02-10T13:13:00.004-05:00

Project Grow is holding a Seed Swap this Saturday February 12th from 10:00-11:30 am at the Downtown Home and Garden barn. If you like swapping seeds and meeting other gardeners, then this is a fun event. I will be there with:

Sweet Pimento

I grew lots of pimentos last year. I find these much easier to grow than bell peppers. The fruits are small but are quicker and more productive. I only grew this kind of pepper in my vegetable garden so the seed strain should be pure. You have to be careful when saving pepper seed because they are pollinated by bees. If you are growing many different kinds close together, they will cross pollinate and your sweets may be hot and so on. I originally got the seed from Fedco.

Red Bull Onion

Onions are pretty easy to grow and this year I decided to grow 'Copra', a yellow storage onion, plus a few red onions. Because I started only about 1/4 as many red ones, I had lots of seeds left and I'll be bringing them to the swap.

Dianthus barbatus

The past few years I started saving the most interesting Sweet William seeds (Dianthus barbatus). I really liked the 'eyed' ones that were purple, so I saved those, and also a purple that has an eye but is lighter and more diffuse. I've been growing these apart from other Sweet William for the past few years, so the strain is fairly consistent, and even when it isn't, the flowers are still pretty.

Genovese Basil

Project Grow's Director, Cindy, saved these from her garden last year and supplied them for the Project Grow plant sale in May. However, Cindy saved so many seeds, I'm going to make up a few packets and bring them to the seed swap, too.

I may bring along some other flower seeds that I got this year for Good Scents, too. Hope to see you there!

Delphiniums

2011-02-05T17:43:00.003-05:00

I had a fairly big die-off of delphiniums this past summer. For the past couple years I planted 'Aurora', one of the varieties I have long used, plus some seeds from Dowdeswell Delphiniums. The Dowdeswell varieties are beautiful and unique but don't seem to hold up as well though our hot and humid summers. I assume it was the summers because I have read delphiniums are super cold hardy and all the delphiniums were treated the same, so I don't think it was a difference in cultural treatment.

In previous years, in addition to 'Aurora', I have grown 'Clear Springs'. However, this year it was dropped from the GeoSeed catalog so I am instead growing 'Magic Fountains'. 'Magic Fountains' is an older strain, kind of a dwarf 'Pacific Giants'. There are more separate colors available than in 'Clear Springs', and you can get white and dark bees, which is kind of cool. So why haven't I grown them in the past? I think I had the impression that 'Magic Fountains' was maybe a little too short, plus I always had such good success with 'Clear Springs' that I had little incentive to try something different.

In addition to the Delphinium cultorum 'Aurora' and 'Magic Fountains', I am also starting some Delphinium belladonna 'Oriental Blue'. I grew this a couple years ago but unlike the other Delphinium belladonna I had grown, most of them died after the first year. They bloomed at the same time as Clarkia and looked really nice with them, so hopefully I will have that pairing again this year.

2011 Cut Flower Class

2011-02-05T17:39:00.002-05:00

I'm going to be teaching a class on cut flowers for Project Grow on Saturday March 5th from 10am-noon. The class will be at the Leslie Science Center Nature House. Click here for all the details.

Organic Gardening

2011-01-09T14:39:00.006-05:00

I do not consider myself a die hard organic gardener. For example, I don't always buy organic produce in the store. Most flowers are not seriously affected by pests or disease, and the few that are (like roses) are difficult to grow commercially in this climate anyway. The end result is that I raise all the flowers for Good Scents, and the few vegetables I grow for myself organically. Mainly this is because I just don't like handling inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.

I'm on the board for Project Grow and in May 2010 I attended part of the County Farm garden kickoff. One of the gardeners asked if Project Grow could put something on their website about what pesticides are organic and which are not. Here are some ideas that were suggested at the meeting:

Most things that are organic will say 'organic' on the label. Things that are not organic will say nothing. For example, 'Pyola' an insecticide that containing pyrethrins plus canola oil to help it adhere to leaves says it is organic. The popular insecticide Sevin (or it's knockoff Eight) make no claims whatever.

Organic products are natural. Insecticides are based on plant products. Fertilizers are based on animal products like blood and manure. Some fertilizers are based on fossilized material like greensand. Inorganic fertilizers tend to say things like "active ingredient".

The most common soil amendment used locally is compost (The City of Ann Arbor sells compost by the bushel and yard) and others include animal manures and peat moss.

There are fine lines separating many of these things. Recently, the word 'Organic' was defined by the USDA and growers must now adhere to guidelines and follow rules and inspections before using it. Food guru Michael Pollan thinks local is more meaningful now than organic. For example, many small farmers cannot afford to spend the time and money involved in receiving organic certification but companies like Dean Foods can easily afford these things. A couple people mentioned that the frequent use of ChemLawn and other pesticides locally may mean that Ann Arbor compost is not as organic as we would like to believe.

While all these things are true, anything grown organically in Ann Arbor compost or antibiotic laden manures will contain fewer pesticide residues than inorganic produce. In addition, anything grown organically will not further contribute to pesticides and chemical fertilizer use.

Thanks again to the gardener at County Farm who brought this up!

Dawn Farm Garden via Google Earth

2011-01-09T14:23:00.005-05:00

I have looked at the Dawn Farm garden where I grow most of my flowers on Google Earth before but never took the time to see how to save the image and post it. I finally did so and here it is! The image shows 136 100sf beds. The picture was taken in May so there basically isn't any color. There are daffodils blooming in the picture, but in mid-May they are all white anyway so none of them show up.

To the North and East you can see a couple white boxes which are the bee hives maintained by Laura K.

Posting More, I Hope

2010-12-28T07:55:00.003-05:00

I read one time that Joan Didion used to answer all her mail but not necessarily promptly. She'd begin these letters with "During my absence from the country for the past several months". I don't have any such excuse, but I hardly did any posts all summer for a several reasons. First, it was hot and wet so it seemed I was constantly behind at the farm. Secondly, I was still recovering from my concussion, so I needed more rest. Lastly, after finishing cleaning everything around the beginning of November, I've been trying to catch up with the rest of my life since then. I'm basically back to normal speed now (it took until probably September from a January accident) and will hopefully post a fair amount of stuff over the rest of the winter.

2011 Seeds

2010-12-28T07:49:00.004-05:00

Here are the seeds I ordered for 2011. All of them are from GeoSeed. I will also be growing, zinnias and statics but I still have those seeds from this year.

It is hard to believe, but I will be starting some of the lisianthus in about a week!

Achillea millefolium F2 summer pastels mix

Ageratum Blue Sensation P

Alchemilla mollis Robustica

Antirrhinum Opus Series Plumblossom

Antirrhinum Opus Series Appleblossom

Antirrhinum Opus Series Early Bronze

Aquilegia vulgaris Barlow Series Mix

Asclepias curassavica Silky series CS

Aster Serenade Blue

Aster Serenade White

Aster Serenade Red

Aster Seastar mix

Bupleurum rotundifolium Garabaldi

Buddleia davidii Butterfly hybrids mixed

Campanula glomerata Alba

Campanula glomerata Superba

Canpanula latifolia macrantha

Campanula persicifolia Telham Beauty

Campanula persicifolia White

Carnation Floristan Mix

Centaurea americana Aloha Blanca

Chrysanthemum coccineum Robinson's
Giant Series

Chrysanthemum parthenium
Gold Moon Improved

Chrysanthemum parthenium Virgo

Cosmos Sensation series Purity

Delphinium belladonna Oriental Blue

Delphinium consolida Exquisite Series

Delphinium consolida regalis
Cloud series Blue

Delphinium consolida regalis
Cloud Series Snow

Delphinium cultorum Aurora F1 Series

Delphinium cultorum Magic Fountains mix

Delphinium cultorum Magic Fountains
Dark blue white bee

Dianthus barbatus Neon Series Purple

Dianthus barbatus Neon Series Rose Magic

Dianthus barbatus white

Erigeron Azure Fairy

Erigeron Pink Jewel

Eucalyptus Silver dollar tree

Godetia Grace shell pink

Godetia Grace Salmon

Godetia Grace white

Gypsophilia elegans White Elephant

Helenium autumnale Helena Series

Helianthus Pro Cut Orange

Helianthus Pro Cut Lemon

Helianthus Pro Cut Yellow Lite

Helianthus Sunbeam

Helianthus Sunrich Gold

Helianthus Sunrich Orange

Heliopsis Summer Sun

Heuchera sanguinea Firefly

Lathryus odoratus Royal Family

Leucanthemum May Queen

Lisianthus Arena Series Red

Lisianthus Arena Series Rose

Lisianthus Cinderella Series Blue

Lisianthus Cinderella Series Ivory

Lisianthus Cinderella Series Lime

Lisianthus Cinderella Series Pink

Lisianthus Cinderella Series Yellow

Lisianthus Twinkle Series Deep Blue

Lisianthus Twinkle Series Blue Blush

Lisianthus Vulcan Series Putple Picotee

Lisianthus Echo Series Champagne

Marigold Gold Coin series
Double Eagle (Orange)

Millet Puple Majesty

Molucella laevis

Parsley triple curled

Perilla frutescens Green Leaved

Primula Rosanna Sesries Mix

Rudbeckia hirta Cherokee Sunset

Rudbeckia hirta Cappuccino

Rudbeckia hirta Goldilocks

Rudbeckia triloba

Dianthus barbatus scarlet

Cut Flower Talk

2010-05-21T12:53:00.002-04:00

I'm going to give a talk / workshop on cut flowers at the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living next Wednesday May 26th from 1-3pm. The event is free and the Center for Independent Living is at 3941 Research Park Drive. Despite the usual late May slump, I will bring whatever cut flowers I can find. Please come!

Project Grow's 2010 Heirloom Vegetable Sale

2010-05-08T17:03:00.004-04:00

Project Grow will is holding their heirloom vegetable sale on May 15th, 16th and 22nd in front of People's Food Co-op on 4th Avenue in Ann Arbor. This is a great place to get a single plant of strange heirloom tomatoes - there are 50 different kinds. All the proceeds go to Project Grow and the expenses are pretty low because all the manpower is provided free from volunteers and the plants are all grown from seed. I know all this because I'm one of the unpaid volunteers.

The sale offers tomatoes, peppers and basils but it is an especially good place to get tomatoes. Click here for a complete listing of what will be offered, hours etc.

Wisteria 2010

2010-05-08T16:33:00.003-04:00

I read somewhere that the biggest limitation for gardeners is time (as opoposed to money or climate I suppose). I guess this can mean hours per day or years per lifetime, and sometimes one seems more meaningful to me than another. Ed Rasmussen, the guy who runs The Fragrant Path, summed up my attitude toward all this when he said, referring to growing shrubs and trees from seed, "if not planted, they will not grow". The point being that if you plant the shrub that takes forever to flower now, in no time at all it will be flowering away every year.

A couple years ago I printed a picture of the Japanese wisteria I planted from Carroll Gardens which took several years to produce a few flowers. Last year it produced even fewer but this year is is literally covered in blooms, so many I can't begin to count them. Here are a couple pictures:

This pergola Joe and I built in front of the house contains 5 sections, and the wisteria is now most of the way through section 2.

Monday April 26th, 2010

2010-04-25T17:48:00.003-04:00

Things still running ahead. I have tons of doronicum this year (Leopard's Bane). I always say it blooms with tulips, and it does. As I've said before, the color is like a dandelion and it is just a yellow daisy, so what really makes it special is how early it blooms.

The clove scented "snowball" that is center on the pink and white bouquets is a Korean spice viburnum. This is Viburnum carlesii I believe. There are hybrids of this flower like Judd's viburnum and 'Mohawk'. The hybrids bloom earlier and grow faster but the Korean spice has the largest flowers. They all smell great to me but some people I'm sure say the Korean spice has the strongest smell.

Friday Aptil 23, 2010

2010-04-23T09:45:00.003-04:00

Everything is really accelerated this year. The crabapples in the easement across the street are blooming and there is also a white flower blooming in the woods down the street. I think it might
be bridal wreath spirea naturalized into shady areas but I'm not sure. You can see the spirea or whatever it is in the first picture - it is the upright white flower.

There are a few bleedin hearts, too, and of course lots of tulips and daffodils. Every year most of the tulips seem to bloom within about 10 days. I will try to keep track of which are the latest ones this year and print those here.

The Right Amount of Weeding

2010-04-20T06:45:00.005-04:00

I have much better luck just letting nature take its course with most difficult to germinate plants such as bleeding hearts, peonies and hellebores than I do trying to germinate them deliberately. With most of these I only want modest numbers of them anyway so that is not a problem.

Of course, there are always exceptions. I was never able to get sweet ciciely going at my house without sowing them in a seed bed over the winter and then transplanting them. I now can't get rid of the stuff and my peerless gardening partner claims it has become a weed. On the other hand, I fussed and fussed to germinate Hellebores and find they grow like weeds beneath any mature plant.

I searched everywhere for a Henry Mitchell quote about this stuff and finally found it by doing a web search. Of course, if I'd never read the whole Henry Mitchell book to begin with I wouldn't have known what to search for. I searched for "Henry Mitchell I have so many weeds", the quote is on the second page of 'A Word About Worts' in One Man's Garden:

Commonly the gardener relies on stray seedlings, but one year he wakes up to see no seedlings at all. I enjoy saying I have none at all after about the third year, and I enjoy saying this because it suggests that I weed so carefully that no little self-sown seedling has a chance. It is far otherwise. I think the trouble is I have so many weeds that no self-sown seedling has breathing space.

By this definition I must be doing about the right amount of weeding because I often get self sown seedlings and the beds are not yet overrun with weeds.

I was really shocked a few years ago to see that I was getting self sown peonies. This is through absolutely no virtue of my own - they just appeared. I thought I was quite lucky and special until I mentioned it to Patrick Lima at Larkwhistle and he said, "Yeah, they do that now and then. They're always single reds"

Oh well. I can see by their distribution that they tend to appear under certain peonies but I'm never on top of things enough in June to keep track of which peonies are creating progeny. The only exception to this rule is one peony I have planted by itself. It is at least the MOTHER of the baby peonies appearing beneath it. There are lots of self-sown alliums in the picture below (at least most of it isn't grass), and you can see several tiny peonies.

You can see that one of the babies is going to bloom this year in this picture:

The parent is a Saunders hybrid called 'Lustrous'. You can often find interesesting peonies very reasonably at Wild's. I f you're willing to poke through catalogs and wait. I paid $9 each for 'Lustrous' and 'Rushlight' in 2002. They say you can contact them with specific requests but I never got an answer when I did.

You can read something about professor Saunders and the peonies he bred here.

Monday April 19th, 2010

2010-04-19T08:07:00.002-04:00

I actually began deliveries last week but couldn't get my act together to take pictures when I was doing all the last minute stuff (making maps for new houses etc) that I leave until the last minute every year. The flowers this week are not greatly different although the bleeding heart is new (I have a plant that is against the house - the ones in the open are not blooming yet).

The double yellow and orange daffodil is 'Tahiti', the pure white one is 'Stainless'.

The apricot and white daffocil is 'Fragrant Breeze' and the woody shrub bloom that is a pink and white cluster and smells like cloves is Judd's viburnum. I also use a later blooming variety called 'Mohican'. Both are descended from the Korean spice viburnum which is where they get their fragrance.

High and Low Tunnels

2010-03-08T11:39:00.004-05:00

High tunnels have gotten a lot of press lately as a way that people in Michigan and other cold climates like Maine (Eliot Coleman, who has popularized their use, is a Mainer) can grow winter vegetables. I understand that people are now selling greens all winter long at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market and they use high tunnels to alter the climate enough to pull this off. Coleman claims using a high tunnel (basically a big, unheated, poly-covered greenhouse) is equivalent to moving 500 miles south or about one climate zone. If you use two layers of protection, for example, Remay suspended over plants inside a high tunnel, Coleman says you can gain 2 zones or about 1000 miles. In Michigan that means getting to Zone 7 or Tennessee and parts of Georgia.

This past fall I created some low-tunnels, kind of the poor man's version of a high tunnel. I used 18” pieces of rebar set 4’ apart and placed an 8’ piece of PVC pipe over each section of rebar. I then used cheapo 4mil clear plastic from Lowes to keep out the weather. Each piece of PVC protected about 3’ of ground, and I used 4 pieces, so a total of about 12 feet ended up covered. At either end, I cut the plastic kind of long, twisted it into a big, 4” rope and covered it with something heavy like a cement block or big piece of junk cement.

Sometime in the fall – I guess it was around early September – I started planting spinach every couple weeks. I covered the soil with the plastic starting in late October November and kept planting spinach until around that time. The smallest plants only had one pair or true leaves in the fall.

I had lots of spinach to harvest for Thanksgiving and then pretty much covered the bed and forgot about it over the winter. This WAS a fairly mild Michigan winter - I don't think it ever went below 0F. The pictures I just took show how well spinach can grow in cold weather. The other picture is of mache that I grew in big coldframes.

The thing I like about low tunnels is that they can be about any size you like and anyone can go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy everything they need to throw one together. You don't need a big yard or a store bought high tunnrl to begin growing greens (and I guess other stuff) out of season.

Concussion

2010-02-16T16:34:00.006-05:00

While I wasn't so busy over the winter I decided to learn to snowboard. I read all kinds of things about geezers learning to snowboard in their 4th and 5th decades and I thought THAT CAN BE ME. Well...uh...no it can't and it won't be.

I still think I did everything I was supposed to. I wore all kinds of protective clothing - a helmet, wrist guards, tail bone pads. Plus, I took lessons and only went on the bunny hill at Mt. Brighton. Nevertheless, I ended up taking an ambulance ride from Brighton to U of M Hospital where I was admitted for 3 days while I was given repeated CAT scans to see if there was bleeding in my brain. Thankfully, there was none and even more thankfully, I don't remember any of this. I haven't had a single drink in 22 years and I still managed TO HAVE A BLACKOUT!

My partner Joe, took vacation time to stay with my while I was in the hospital and my friends Anita and Michael checked in on me daily for my first week back home. The week in the hospital was January 13th and I'm pretty much back to normal now. My memory is OK though my balance isn't perfect and I am more prone to naps than I used to be. I'm still hoping and planning on being back in business in mid-April.

Clean up and November Flowers

2009-11-12T17:47:00.005-05:00

My last delivery was on October 16th and since then I've put in 2300 tulips for next year and finished cleaning up all the beds at the farm. For beds containing perennials, this means cutting everything down and removing as many weeds as I can manage. For the beds that contained annuals, the plants pulled out, the bed weeded and tilled, about 5-7 wheelbarrows of compost are added, and then the bed is tilled again. Then the bed is covered with straw to prevent germination of weeds until next year. I prepped about 50 4'x25' in this fashion, moving about 25 yards of compost by hand. The best thing about doing this is that I get to eat all the ice cream and peanut butter I want and don't gain any weight.

On my last trip to the farm I cut a final bouquet. It is a bit dull because it is all blues and purples but pretty cool to be able to still harvest flowers in November.

The flowers are delphiniums, asters and sea hollies.

Bouquets for Monday August 31st, 2009

2009-08-31T17:49:00.005-04:00

I have lots of different flowers to work with right now so I'm able to make more different color combinations. Herre are 5 different ones though there were probably 10 different color combinations today.

I used only dark red and dark purple in this first one. This might not be what you'd want if you were depressed but one of my daytime customers said, "Wow! I like that" when I handed it to her. The dark purple flowers are lisianthus, the small red ones are 'Serenade' china asters and the large red ones are zinnias. A single dark red snapdragon spike adds an another variety to the shapes.

This birght bouquet of orange and white might be exactly what you'd want if you were feeling depressed. The large orange flowers are zinnias and the small orange ones are butterfly weed. The whites are lisianthus and a large white dahlia, and the greenery is artemesia.

This yellow and white that is also very cheery. A yellow snapdragon is surrounded by yellow lilies, white lisianthus, goldenrod (not yet open), and yellow zinnias.

I always like using complementary colors. Here purple lisianthus are paired with salmon zinnias and agastache.

Fall is definitely coming in this last bouquet of yellow and rusty oranges. The small daisies are helenium, combined with sunflowers, zinnias and dahlias. The cattail spikes are an ornamental millet called 'Purple Majesty'.

Bouquets for Friday August 21st

2009-08-20T17:24:00.003-04:00

Someone at the Open House mentioned that she has especially enjoyed the one and two color bouquets I've been doing this year, so this one made of all different shades of purple is for you, , Karen. The delphinium is a rebloom on one of the new plants this year, along with lavender statice, blue 'Cinderella' lisianthus and purple aster 'Serenade'

Here is another bicolor combining reds with white. the white lisianthus actually have a very faint rose rim on the petals but you probably can't see it in the picture. The big dahlias are 'Naomi', the china aster is red 'Serenade', and the snapdragon is red 'Opus'

More Tomatoes!

2009-08-20T17:14:00.003-04:00

Some of the larger beefsteaks are starting to ripen now. that's a quarter on the cutting board to give you an idea of scale.

Left to right there is 'Evergreen', 'Gold Brooks' and 'Pineapple'. They weigh 6, 9 and 16 ounces respectively. I really like all of them but without tasting them side by side I might have a hard time telling you how they differ. 'Gold Brooks' seems to have relatively few seeds and is kind of dry for a beefsteak, almost like a big paste tomato. The sweet-acid balance seems about right to me. 'Evergreen ', like most green tomatoes, is a little more fruity-spicy as is 'Pineapple'.

Garden Open House

2009-08-13T13:21:00.003-04:00

All my customers already know this but if you're not one of my customers and would like to see where I grow all the flowers I write about on this blog, here is your chance. I will be hosting an Open House at my garden at Dawn Farm on Saturday August 15th from 1-4pm. The public is welcome - check the Dawn Farm link above for directions.

Tomatoes!

2009-08-11T07:12:00.004-04:00

Last year I grew a few tomato plants and felt like there were never enough tomatoes so I went overboard with them this year. I volunteered to head the seed starting team for Project Grow's heirloom plant sale and started several other varieties on my own at home. The first tomatoes are coming in now so I took a picture:

I don't have a very educated or experienced palate for tomatoes but for what it is worth, my comments follow.

From left to right - top row

Lemon Drop - these tiny yellow tomatoes are almost translucent and are super sweet. It is early and productive but cracks easily. Great for eating right in the garden.

Chadwick Cherry - seems like a standard cherry tomato to me. Fairly large, red - nothing more to say for now.

Gajo de Melon - this cherry has a fruity, melon-y taste I like but it also has a really thick skin I don't care for. On the other hand, the thick skin may help it resist cracking.

Nell's Green - a Project Grow introduction that didn't sell very well at the plant sale. That's a shame because I really like it! It has a bright, fruity taste similar to other green tomatoes like 'Aunt Ruby's German Green' but is earlier and seems easier to grow.

Second Row, left to right

Green Gage - I'm not crazy about this tomato. The texture seems mealy or mushy to me.

Cherokee Chocolate - is certainly striking looking and tasted...well...like a tomato is supposed to taste. This is not faint praise because I find some of the more popular heirlooms, like 'Kellogg's Breakfast' kind of bland.

Black Zebra - this is one of the prettiest tomatoes I've seen. It has the same dark orange-brown coloring as Cherokee Chocolate but with dark green stripes. The flavor of black tomatoes is usually described as "complex" or "smoky" or "winey". I would say this had more of a black tomato (different) taste than Cherokee Chocolate, but I didn't taste them side by side.

All for now but more varieties coming!

Pole Beans

2009-08-08T09:04:00.005-04:00

I don't grow many vegetables but have been trying to do a few more. One of the things I'm growing this year are pole beans. Pole beans are climbers that don't start producing until a week or 10 days after the bush beans but are supposed to continue bearing until frost if you keep them picked. Most people grow them on teepees made of bamboo poles but you can also grow them on a trellis. I didn't trust myself to build a credible teepee so I got a 16 foot cattle panel and bent it into an arch. The base of the arch is about 4-5 feet wide and you can walk right under it. I planted a row of pole beans on either side of the panel and they have done really well. You can see the beans hanging through the trellis - pretty cool!

I'm completely sold on this way of growing beans. The trellis should last for years and the beans are easy to pick. I'd like to say I thought of this myself but I read about it in the Vertical Gardening forum on GardenWeb. I bought the cattle panel afor $20 at the Tractor Supply in Saline. Transportation can be tricky. A friend of mine has a big stake truck so he picked it up for me but one of the posters on GardenWeb said he just bent the panel into shape and stood it upright in a regular pickup truck. The tension in the panel held it firmly against the sides of the truck and he drove it straight home. I'd probably still want to tie it down but it ought to work.

I am growing two different varieties - 'Blue Lake' and 'Kentucky Wonder'. 'Blue Lake' appears to be a bit more vigorous - it is the one growing on the right side of the trellis - or it may just be that the right side faces east. They are similar in taste but I prefer the 'Blue Lake' a bit. the 'Kentucky Wonder' beans seem a bit more prone to curling, too, so I'll be sticking with 'Blue Lake' from now on.

So far I have harvested about 8 pounds of beans. I'm not as diligent at keeping records as I'd like to be but I'm going to try to keep track of how much I harvest and over how long.

Bouquets for Friday August 7th 2009

2009-08-08T08:42:00.005-04:00

I have lots of lisianthus available now and making pretty bouquets is easy. The first bouquet is red and white. The oriental lily is 'Dizzy' - quite a bit more striking than 'Stargazer'. The lisiathus are white with a rose rim and the dark red dahlia is 'Naomi'. A single white delphinium is th eonly other flower.
Everyone who has gotten these blue (or purple), white and silver bouquets has really liked them so I will keep making them while the flowers hold out.

All yellow and white in the next bouquet. This is another orental lily with no pink or red in it called 'Time Out'. The double yellow flowers are Rudbeckia laciniata, sometimes sold as 'Golden Glow'. Yellow statice and white lisianthus fill in the rest.

I am almost out of Bells of Ireland and was only able to make one green and white bouquet like this. The lisianthus here are 'Magic Green' - basically a white with a green eye, and the dahlia is 'Center Court'. There are also sprigs of Sweet Annie (Artemesia annua) for foliage.

Last is a bouquet with no lisianthus containing a mix of Rudbeckia laciniata, snapdragons, yellow statice, zinnias and Rudbeckia hirta

A Few Close-ups from the Garden

2009-07-28T17:40:00.004-04:00

I seem to never remember to bring a camera to the farm but I did yesterday so I took a few close-ups. This is dahlia 'Cornel'. The flower is about 3" across.

This is a yellow dahlia called 'Hissy Fitz'. It is larger, maybe 4-5 inches across.

A couple Rudbeckia hirta next. The first is the quill petaled 'Chim Chiminee' and the second is a double called 'Autumn Sunset'. Both are quite large, perhaps 3-4 inches across.

Then a couple Benary's Giant zinnias. The first is 'Wine Red'. It is like Benary's Giant Purple except a bit redder and a bit darker. A nice color though I was hoping it would be darker. The second is 'Salmon Rose', one I have not grown before.

Last of all are a couple delphinium pictures. The first is from the 'Misty Mauves' seed strain from Dowdeswell Delphiniums in New Zealand. The 'Misty Mauves' is interesting because the flowers are so doubled. I think the color is really cool, too - the outermost (bottom most?) petals are tipped in pale blue. Also, unlike other delphiniums I grow, this one has almost no contrasting center or 'bee'. The second picture is of 'Aurora', a really nice hybrid delphinium. You can really notice doubling and absence of a bee when you compare the 'Misty Mauves' to the 'Aurora'. All delphinums are gorgeous, or course, but the 'Aurora' looks almost dowdy in comparison to the 'Misty Mauves', especially when view closely like this.

Bouquets for Monday July 27th 2009

2009-07-27T14:54:00.006-04:00

A few new flowers this week. The lily below is scented like an oriental lily but has coloring like an asiatic. The orientals usually have only crimson and purple shades of red. This one is called 'Red Dutch'. The bouquet also contains grass 'Purple Majesty', yellow statice, rudbeckia and coreopsis, and zinnias.

One of my customers who received a bouquet like the one below said it was her favorite so far. It contains silver artemesia, blue echinops, white liatris, white lisianthus, blue ageratum, white a blue phlox and white feverfew.

This bouquet is all pink, red and white - kind of like Valentine's Day.

This bouquet contains salmon lisianthus with salmon zinnias, Opus 'Appleblossom' snapdragons and Bells of Ireland. There is also a 'Coral Charm' peony on the right from the fridge.

Fashion Statement for Ken

2009-07-23T12:33:00.004-04:00

I don't collect Barbie dolls but I do own one Ken doll, called the "Magic Earring" Ken doll. I bought this particular Ken doll back in the 90s aftter I read about it in (of all places) the Wall Street Journal. He's been sitting in my bathroom ever since.

At any rate, I saw a single floret from a Bells of Ireland on the floor the other day. When I picked it up I noticed that this Bell of Ireland looked a bit like a little elf hat and decided that after 16 years Ken needed a wardrobe update.

Bouquets for Monday July 20th

2009-07-20T17:31:00.007-04:00

I took a bunch of pictures this week. I was actually short of flowers because I have almost no heliopsis or gooseneck flowers this year to use as yellow and white fillers. had to use some commercial chrysanthemums but planted new heliopsis this spring and divided the gooseneck flowers today, so I should be OK next year.

The first one combines pink larkspur with purple phlox 'Laura', Bells of Ireland and a big white globe thistle at the top. The salmon sweet william is from the 'Sweet' series, an annual type (first year flowering).

The second one is a standard set of colors - red, orange and yellow. A bit different because of the big dark gold or brown amaranth 'Hot Biscuits' in the center. I am not sure how I feel about amaranths - I like the color of this one but they always look a bit coarse to me. You can also see the first orange zinnia of the year along with a quilled rudbeckia 'Chim Chiminee' on the left. The red flower in the upper right is a crocosima. This bouquet also had centaurea and achillea 'Terra Cotta'

This purple bouquet has the first liatris of the year with a light purple phlox called (I think) 'Blue Boy'. You can see some peonies in there that were cut in the first week of June. I still have a bunch in the fridge and need to use them pretty quickly. The big lily is 'Triumphator'

I wanted to include a picture of this yellow-orange-white bouquet because the delphinium is one of the 'Green Twist' delphiniums I got from Dowdeswell Delphiniums in New Zealand. It is a bit hard to see in the picture but the individual flowers are very double and edged with a bit of green.

Also wanted to include this one because it is a color combination I had not tried before - yellow-orange-green. Kind of fun. The grass spikes you see in some of these are Northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium).

Bouquets for Friday July 10th

2009-07-20T17:24:00.003-04:00

I have not been doing a very good job of keeping up this year. I liked this one because it was a color combination I don't use often - all purple and red. The purple phlox with the white eye is 'Laura' and the raspberry colored mondarda is 'Raspberry Wine'. You can also see a couple purple balloon flowers in the upper right. the other flowerrs are larkspurs and a lavender delphinium.

Bouquets for Monday July 6th

2009-07-06T08:30:00.005-04:00

A few new flowers for Monday - green Bells of Ireland (Molucella laevis), orange perennial butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). This bouquet combines salmon pink larkspur and clarkia with 'Appleblossom' snapdragon, 'Suncrest' lily and Bells of Ireland.

This second one is all hot colors - bright yellow snapdragons with orange butterfly weed and red monarda.

This third one combines purple larkspur - both the spike and open branched kinds - with an orange lily, orange butterfly weed and a few purple erigeron.

Bouquets for Friday July 3rd

2009-07-06T08:19:00.004-04:00

I made a bunch more red-white-blue bouquets for the holiday but I posted pictures of those Monday. Many other people received pink-purple or coral-white bouquets like these on Friday. Most of the flowers have already been used this year. There are purple larkspur, pink phlox, erigeron in the pink-ppurple bouquet and coral and white bicolor snapdragons and clarkia in the white and coral bouquet, along with a coral lily.

Bouquets for Monday June 29th

2009-06-28T12:29:00.005-04:00

Quite a few fun colors and flowers this Monday. In honor of the upcoming holiday I did a few red, white and blue bouquets using blue delphiniums, red lilies and monarda and white feverfew. One of my Monday business customers said the monarda looked like fireworks!

I also made quite a few using just purple and pink. The purples are clustered bellflowers and another bellflower I only know as 'Kent Belle'. It may be some kind of hybrid, I don't know. The pinks include delphinium, phlox, astilbe and clarkia.

Also did a few apricot and purple like this one using apricot lilies with the same purple bellflowers plus achillea 'Terra Cotta'

About half a dozen bouquets were blue and yellow. Most of my heliopsis died over the winter so I won't have many. I started more this year but I should have done it last year. You can also see a yellow centaurea, white annual gypsophila and yarrows.

I almost never make anything containing only two kinds of flowers, but I made quite a few bouquets containing only delphiniums and clarkia - basically salmon and blue.

Bouquets for Friday June 26th

2009-06-25T14:49:00.004-04:00

Each year I grow cut flowers I learn something new and (I hope) produce better and better bouquets. Mostly this involves learning how to grow things, though somtimes it involves learning how to harvest things for better vase life or something like that. It took me several years to be able to grow decent Clarkia with stems long enough to be useful. The trick was to get them into the ground as soon as possible before they get pot-bound. This year I planted them out exceptionally early under a low tunnel and have been rewarded with probably the nicest ones I have ever grown. The bouquet below has salmon and white clarkia combined with delphiniums and sweet william. There's also a single stem of white phlox in the middle.

If you follow this blog at all you can see I use maybe a dozen different color schemes but create them with different flowers throughout the year. One I haven't used yet this year combines purple with dusty rose and green-ish lilies. The little pink daisies are fleabane (or more prettily, Erigerion).

This next bouquet is the same all pastel color scheme I made a bunch of on Monday. The only difference is this time I was able to add some white astilbes.

Bouquets for June 22, 2009

2009-06-21T18:06:00.004-04:00

Lots of delphiniums this week but they will probably all be gone in one more week. I have posted so many with blue and purple so here are a couple different looking bouquets I made with white delphiniums. The first is white, purple and coral with the purple coming from clustered bellflowers and the coral from Heuchera (coral bells) and 'Newport Pink' dianthus.

The second one combines white with orange trollius, melon colored lilies and yellow yarrow. The colors make me think of citrus.

The last one is all pastels with silver artemesia. The pink daisies are erigerion.

I also made a number of lavender/apricot and blue/yellow bouquets this week.

Bouquets for Monday June 15th

2009-06-14T16:45:00.005-04:00

The bouquets were really nice this week, I'm enjoying having the bellflowers which are new this year. The first one is fairly typical of what I do at this time of year - blue with pink and red.

The next is purple delphinium and bell flowers with salmon and scarlet sweet william. There are a few sprigs of coral bells and green lady's mantle to add some airiness.

Last is white, scarlet, orange and yellow. The orange flowers are trollius, the yellow is yarrow, the scarlet is sweet william and the white is a delphinium and white peonies.

Selecting Sweet William Strains

2009-06-14T16:24:00.004-04:00

I mentioned last year that I really love Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus). I grow several different seed strains - white, scarlet, "black", salmon as well as a double strain called 'Duplex' and an auricle eyed strain called "Electron".

Last year I noticed a couple of the 'Electron' plants were white with a purple eye. Most of the time they are white with a red eye, or pink with red. I decided to try saving seed from the purple ones and about 50% of the resulting plants bloomed with purple eyes. This is not surprising since they were in with all the other ones and would have crossed with them. I planted the purple eyed plants apart from the others this time and removed all the non-purple ones when they bloomed, so hopefully the seed I save this year will be truer. Here is how the purple eyed ones look. Some are dark purple but one has more like purple brush strokes.

Saving seed and making repeated selections like this is how all heirloom seed strains are created, so this year I'm going to pick out a few more. One is a dark red - not as dark as the 'black' strain, but a deep maroon. The other other is a purple double.

The red eyed flower to the lower right of the dark red gives you an idea of just how purple the purple eyed ones really are. The double purple is not as double as some of them, but the color is fairly unusual.

Bouquets for Friday June 12th

2009-06-11T13:05:00.004-04:00

When you grow perennials for cut flowers there is a delay of at least a year from the time you plant the seed to when you actually start harvesting flowers. Last year I mentioned starting peach leaved bell flowers and here they finally are - the white "bell' flowers to the right of the delphinium. The others are the usual flowers for this season - sweet william, peonies, lady's mantle. I really love all of these.

As gorgeous as pink-blue-white bouquets are at this time of year, it gets monotonous if you can't see something else.This next bouquet contains salmon pink 'Newport Pink' dianthus, scarlet dianthus, coral bells, and white lily, peonies and delphinium.

Bouquets for Monday June 1st and Friday June 5th

2009-06-11T12:53:00.003-04:00

Delphiniums and peonies are coming in now. The hybrid delphinium 'Aurora' that I've been growing for the past couple years blooms a week or 10 days earlier than 'Clear Springs'. This is nice as long as I remember to keep replanting some 'Clear Springs' to extned the season.

The spikes of 'Aurora' are almost a little too tall for the size of bouquets I make. This bouquet has some of my favorite flowers of the season - delphiniums, peonies, forced lilies and scarlet sweet william.

This second bouquet contains forced lilies, 'Moonshine' yarrow, sweet william and some green lady's mantle. One of my customers mentioned that the lady's mantle, "doesn't smell too great", though I don't really notice it.

Bouquets for Friday May 28th

2009-06-11T12:47:00.003-04:00

Have really fallen behind in posting pictures this season. The first bouquet has salmon lily, purple alliums, purple clustered bellflowers, coral bells, shasta daisies and red single peony.

This second bouquet has blue baptisa, shasta daisies, white peonies and a few commercial yellow mums.

Bouquets for Monday May 25th

2009-05-25T17:31:00.003-04:00

These bouquets have commercial chrysanthemums and statice but also include the first peonies and forced lilies. The brilliant pink peony is 'Paula Fay'. I don't have any other peonies that are quite that color. the Wild's catalog says somthing like the color, "carries well across the garden" which it certainly does. The big blue and white stippled iris is (I think) 'Stepping Out'.

The orange lily with the black blotches is an asiatic lily called 'Loreto'. I have not grown it before but it is certainly striking.

Bouquets for Friday May 22nd

2009-05-25T17:25:00.004-04:00

I've been really bad about taking pictures this year. About half the bouquets last Friday look like this. The chrysanthemums and statice are commercial flowers. The large white flowers on the lower left are double file viburnum. The arching flower with the varigated leaves is varigated solomon's seal. You can also seen allium 'Purple Sensation' and perennial bachelor's button (Centaurea montana).

Heirloom Tomato Sale

2009-05-14T10:31:00.002-04:00

The second part of Project Grow's heirloom tomato sale is this Saturday May 16th from 8am-3pm in front of the People's Food Co-op on $th Avenue in Ann Arbor. Plants were also available at the Matthaei Botanical Garden plant sale last weekend and more than 2/3 of the plants were snapped up there, so if you are looking for unusual tomato seedlings be sure to stop by this Saturday.

Bouquets for Friday May 15th

2009-05-14T10:26:00.003-04:00

I've been really busy and have not been keeping up with posting pictures. The flowers in the bouquets have pretty much been the same for the past few weeks - daffodils, tulips, crabapple branches, Doronicum, and lilacs.

Flowers for tomorrow were either pink and white or yellow and white like these:

I'm about out of tulips and daffodils and still waiting to see if enough shasta daisies, iris, alliums and columbines will open up for next Monday. It is not looking too good right now.

Botanical Names 101 - Lesson 2

2009-04-22T09:52:00.003-04:00

The latest Bluebird newsletter has some more fun species names.

angustifolius (an-gus-ti-FO-li-us). Narrow-leaved.
australis (as-TRA-lis). Southern.
canadensis (kan-a-DEN-sis). From Canada.
deltoides (del-TOID-ez). Triangular shape.
mollis (MOL-lis). Soft, hairy.
nutans (NU-tanz). Nodding.
pallida (PAL-lid-a) Pale.
rupestris (ru-PRES-tris). Rock-loving.
scandens (SKAN-denz). Climbing.
speciosus (spe-si-O-sus). Showy, good-looking.
spicata (spi-KA-ta). With spikes.

I can only think of a couple of these off the top of my head but they do fit. For example, Lady's Mantle is Alchemilla mollis and the leaves are indeed soft and fuzzy. Gayfeather or Liatris spicata blooms on long, narrow spikes.

Bouquets for Monday April 20th

2009-04-20T08:08:00.002-04:00

For the first two or three weeks each season, all the bouquets look pretty much alike. I've only got tulips and daffodils to work with so they differ mainly in colors and types of greenery. Here is one for today that has boxwood. The daffodils (which were open by today) are pale yellow so they look pretty good with the pinks.

Bouquets for April 13th and 17th, 2009

2009-04-18T21:04:00.005-04:00

The first bouquets of 2009 looked very similar to the one shown below. This picture was taken on Tuesday evening of a bouquet made up for Monday. In the bouquets for Monday, I had cut some of the daffodils too early and they did not all open properly. They still looked OK until they started to actually fade, but they didn't look exactly like daffodils. You can see how the daffodils look like yellow tube flowers instead of daffodils.

Here is the same bouquet on Wednesday evening. The tulip stems have lengthened even more now.

On Thursday evening I recut the tulips to different lengths and rearranged them. The daffodils are looking pretty tired.

And here they are again on Friday evening.

Last of all is a picture from Saturday. I pulled out the daffodils but the tulips are still looking pretty good.

New Infrastructure - Mini-hoophouses

2009-03-30T08:07:00.006-04:00

One of the problems I have had over the years has been coming up with a good way to suspsend insect barrier row covers over china asters and snapdragons. China asters are terribly susceptible to aster yellows and need row covers to keep out leafhoppers which transmit the disease. Snapdragons have the bad characteristic of dropping the lower flowers as soon as they are pollinated. To get nice, long spikes, snapdragons need to be grown in a greenhouse or covered with rowcovers to keep out pollinating insects.

The row covers used for these purposes need to be suspended with some structure because if the row cover is allowed to "float" on the flowers, they can be bent or broken in high winds or when it rains. In the past I have rigged up supports using pvc pipe but have always had problems with the row cover tearing on the corners of the support. I have also had problems anchoring the row cover to the ground. I can't bury it the way some vegetables growers do because once the flowers start blooming, I need to lift the cover a couple times a week to cut the flowers.

Most often row covers are supported using little wire hoops but I didn't think these would work over a 4 foot wide bed containing plants more than 2 feet tall. I finally had the idea to adapt designs for do it yourself hoophouses. The materials I used were 2 foot sections of 3/8" rebar and 8 foot sections of pvc pipe. After squaring up the bed, I set the rebar ever 2 1/2 feet along each side of the bed and pounded them in so only about 6" stuck out of the ground. Then I bent the pvc pipe and slid each end over a rebar stake so they arched across the bed. To add stability, I joined pieces to make a 25 foot piece of pvc and attached it under the top of each arch.

The row cover can then be stretched over the entire frame. The cover is gathered and twisted together at the ends. Because I will be lifting the cover frequently, I decided to just weigh down each end with a big rock.

Seed catalogs sell fancy (and expensive) pegs for holding down row cover but I read that you can just use ground staples on top of a piece of wood.

I put all this together in a couple hours today. I wanted to set it up now so I can see how it performs before I actually put in the plants.

New Infrastructure - Coldframes

2009-03-30T07:44:00.007-04:00

Over the past year I have become more interested in growing vegetables. I'm already growing so many flowers that it doesn't seem like it should be that much more work to grow some of the stuff I most like to eat - leafy greens, peas, tomatoes, radishes, peppers and so on. Partly this is to be eating better, fresher food and partly it is to try to eat more locally.

While investigating eating locally, everything I read kept mentioning Eliott Coleman's book "Four-Season Harvest" which I finally purchased. I built a couple 4'x8' coldframes based on Coleman's design. I glazed mine with sheet fiberglass instead of glass or polycarbonate because I already had it. The frames are made from 2x12 and 2x8 lumber with a 4' piece of 2x2 lumber in the middle connecting the front and back.

The frames for the covers are made of 2x2 lumber and are not hinged to the frame. This makes the frames much easier to move around. The covers are edged with 1x3 inch lumber so they fit snugly like the cover of a shoebox.

I built the coldframes with the plan of growing some greens for winter harvest, but then realized I can start using them before that. I am going to try placing them over one of the beds I use for lisianthus and try planting out the lisianthus directly into the beds in mid-April. Hopefully this will bring in an earlier crop of lisianthus.

2009 Delphiniums Part 2

2009-02-12T08:23:00.005-05:00

I have always been careful about not frittering money away on things, a good virtue to have these days. Since leaving the exciting world of data processing last year, I've become particularly careful, buying clothing at thrift stores and asking myself, "Do you really need this" about every discretionary purchase. However, I do still sometimes indulge my passion for plants, especially when I can justify it as a business expense. This is not always good for the bottom line but delights me and hopefully my customers, too.

After hearing from Terry Dowdeswell of Dowdeswell's Delphiniums in my last post, I decided I had to send off for some of their seed. Terry had mentioned 'Green Twist' as a good cut flower and it was one of the ones I was most intrigued by so that is what I ordered. It only took about a week to get the seeds from New Zealand and they generously gave me a bonus packet of another good cutting variety, 'Morning Lights'. Here are pictures from Dowdeswell's website:

The seed plus shipping cost $26 for 100 seeds. That sounds pretty steep when 'Clear Springs' costs less than $4 per packet for 500 seeds. But, when I figure in the fun factor of ordering seeds from New Zealand and growing a couple varieties no one around here has ever seen, I think it's a bargain.

I love my job.

2009 Delphiniums

2009-01-29T10:13:00.004-05:00

I just took the delphinium flats out of the fridge where they have been for the past 3 weeks. This year I am growing 200 'Aurora' as well as 200 of a new one called 'New Century'. I'm not sure they are any better than 'Clear Springs' which is what I usually grow. Both 'Aurora' and 'New Century' are hybrids so all the plants of a particular color should look identical. On the other hand, because 'Clear Springs' is open pollinated, each plant is slightly different and that means you sometimes find interesting surprises like nearly turquoise blues or whites with faint green markings in the bees.

I recently read the delphinium section of Hardy Perennials by the English garden writer Graham Rice. In most parts of the USA, delphiniums are short lived perennials so our only option is to obtain seed grown plants. In England it is a different story. England's climate allows delphiniums to be long lived perennials so many individual cultivars (i.e. clones) of delphiniums are available, with names like 'Giotto', 'Summerfield Miranda' and 'Tiddles'. There is a Delphinium Society, special RHS medals for delphiniums and annual RHS trials at Wisley where you can view all the latest delphimiums. I don't know why this seems so eccentric to me, it is really no different than our Hemerocallis, Dahlia and Hosta societies which also have display gardens, medals, and so on. I guess I'm just not enough of a fanatic about any one plant to want to belong to a society devoted to it.

Nevertheless, if I ever have some spare time and space (I can dream, can't I?), I'd like to order some delphinium seed from New Zealand where some of the recent English medal winners have originated. You can check it out here: New Millenium Delphiniums. Of course, these New Millenium delphiniums will not be the dwarf 3-5 foot varieties I grow for cutting, but the 5-8 foot monsters which require a stake dedicated to each flower spike. If anyone decides to grow some, please send some pictures and I will post them here.

Project Grow's Heirloom Plant Sale

2009-01-11T09:40:00.001-05:00

One of Project Grow's annual fundraisers is an heirloom plant sale. The sale is actually two events held in May. The first is over Mother's Day weekend as part of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens plant sale and the second sale is a Project Grow only event the following weekend in front of People's Food Co-op in Ann Arbor. The sale offers several varieties of basil and peppers, but it is mainly about heirloom tomatoes. The seed strains for these tomatoes are maintained by a hardcore group of Project Grow volunteers who are passionate about tomatoes. Each year they grow dozens of varieties and then save the seeds of their favorites. You can buy these locally raised and selected heirloom seeds at People's Food Co-op, or you can visit the sale and buy plants. Here is a list of the 51 varieties of tomatoes that will be available at this year's sale:

Cherry

Bicolor Cherry

Brown Berry Cherry
Gajo de Melon
Isis Candy
Lemon Drop
Nell’s Green
Peacevine Cherry
Snow White
Yellow Pear

Paste
Dunneaux
Hogheart
Orange Banana
Pirkstine Orange
Polish Linguisa
Purple Russian
Saucy
Speckled Roman

Saladette
Aviuri
Black Zebra
Cosmonaut Volkov
Costolutto Genovese
Ethel Watkins Best
Glacier
Green Zebra
Olga’s Yellow Round Chicken
Pachino
Stupice
Tiger’s Paw

Patio
Burpee Quarter Century
Macrocarpum Lutea
Pixie Red Rock
Principe Borghese
Red Russian

Oxheart
Aunt Astrida’s Latvian Oxheart
Cannestrino di Lucca
Orange Russian 117
Orange Strawberry
Ukranian Bullsheart

Beefsteak
Aunt Lillian’s Yellow
Aunt Ruby’s German Green
Berkley Tie Dye
Prize-winning Bicolor
Black Krim
Caspian Pink
Cherokee Purple
Coustralee
Evergreen
West Virginia Hillbilly
Kellogg’s Breakfast
Magnum
Pineapple

Project Grow Community Gardens

2009-01-11T09:17:00.001-05:00

Last Fall I became involved again with Project Grow, Ann Arbor's community gardening organization. Founded in 1972, Project Grow is one of the oldest community gardening organizations in the country. Their main endeavor is running about a dozen community garden sites in Ann Arbor. Plots at the gardens are large, about 25 x 30, so you can grow enough food to actually feed a small family. They rent for around $120 per season, but there is a sliding scale for people who cannot afford the full price. In addition, Grow is involved with providing gardening opportunities to children, seniors and special needs gardeners at the Discovery Garden at Leslie Science Center. They also run a program for organic gardening certification at Washtenaw Community College, and hold numerous classes and events. You can read all about them at their website.

Special Events

2008-12-07T17:03:00.001-05:00

I occasionally am asked to make up special one time bouquets for people. Here is a big bouquet I made up for one of my customers this past summer.

Perennial Asters

2008-12-07T14:06:00.008-05:00

There are many aster species but the ones most commonly used for cut flowers today are hybrids derived from Aster novi-belgii (New York aster) and Aster novae-angliae (New England aster). These are North American natives and you have probably seen their white or purple flowers in fields and along roadsides in autumn. While originating here in North America it is the English who really love perennial asters and all the well known cultivars were developed in England. Because their bloom coincides with Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael (September 29th), these asters are known in England as Michaelmas daisies. I'm a bit of an Anglophile and maybe that's why asters have always been one of my favourite flowers.

Red 'Crimson Brocade' asters with chrysanthemums.

Like chrysanthemums, late bloom and frost tolerance make perennial asters useful in the border and as cut flowers. Unlike warm coloured chrysanthemums, asters only come in cool colours - pinks, purples, blues, crimsons and white - with contrasting yellow or orange centres. If you are careless when combining chrysanthemums and asters, these colours can be a problem (think bronze and hot pink), but if you are a little careful, you can create smashing combinations like pale blue and yellow or bronze and dark purple.

Good filler flowers are always valuable and asters make especially nice fillers because of their range of color and season of bloom. In addition, the flowers are held atop multiply branched stems, so a single cut can yield a bouquet's worth of flowers. I sometimes create a bouquet by starting with a single big stem of asters and then filling in with other, larger flowers like lilies and dahlias.

New England Aster

Aster novae-angliae or New England asters are among the easiest to find and grow, but are less desirable as cut flowers because they close at night. This is not very noticeable outside but if cut and brought inside they may look like they are starting to shrivel and fade. Some of the better known tall New England varieties are the purple 'Hella Lacy', light pink 'Honeysong Pink' and dark pink 'September Ruby'. Monarch butterflies flock to 'Hella Lacy' so you might want to grow it for that reason alone.

New York Aster
Better as cut flowers are Aster novi-belgii or New York asters. They are tough perennials and make beautiful long lasting cut flowers but they are a bit more difficult to find and grow. The taller New York asters usually need to be staked. Fussy gardeners should also realise they are prone to powdery mildew and will usually drop the lower third of their leaves by the time they bloom. This doesn't really matter to me and I never bother to spray them with anything to prevent it. However, if growing them in a perennial border it is probably better to position them toward the back so this won't be noticed.

In The Gardener's Guide to Growing Asters (published in England, naturally) Paul Picton describes more than 280 novi-belgii cultivars. Of these, most of the commonly available ones like "Professor Anton Kippenberg' and 'Alert' are short. I've been able to locate only a few of the taller ones such as the fully double blue 'Marie Ballard', the dark red 'Crimson Brocade', and an unknown medium height lavender pink variety mistakenly sold to me as 'Fellowship'. I hope to add several others this year but they may not show up in bouquets for a year or two while I build up stock.

Other Asters
I also grow a hybrid aster called 'Little Carlow' with small 3/4" lavender-blue flowers. The plants are 3-4 feet tall so the flowers are the only little thing about 'Carlow'.

Lavender 'Little Carlow' asters with orange lilies and agastache.

Asters should be divided every few years, though the tougher ones will keep going even if you don't. Divide asters in the spring when the new shoots begin to appear. Experts recommend starting new clumps from individual new shoot taken from the outside of the old clump rather than splitting the old, woody center into pieces. I usually pot up the individual shoots in 3" pots and baby them along in a semi-shaded area for a few weeks before planting them back in a bed. I divide my New York asters every year and plant the divisions about 9"-12" apart. The new plants bloom at the usual time in the fall and a group of 6-8 can make quite show.

Cut asters when a third to a half of the flowers are open. The stems are woody and it is best to re-cut the stem under water when you get home.

Winter Reading - The Essential Earthman

2008-11-25T07:11:00.009-05:00

The weather is just starting to get unpleasant so this is a great time to settle in with a good gardening book while the wind blows and the snow piles up. I've literally got about 15 feet of gardening books but aside from a handful of reference works, there are only a few I re-read over and over.

One of my favorites is Henry Mitchell's The Essential Earthman, the first of three collections of 'Earthman' columns Henry Mitchell wrote for the Washinton Post. Mitchell, who died in 1993, knew a great deal, but was still one of us - an ordinary but passionate gardener. He hated pretense and showing off, saying, "Gardening is not some sort of game by which one proves his superiority over others, nor is it a marketplace for the display of elegant things that others cannot afford." Deborah Needleman describes him as the anti-Martha Stewart, saying, "He would have hated her, and she would be appalled by him."

Earthman is full of cultural information about choosing and growing daffodils, dahlias, irises, water lilies and so on. It also contains some of the best guidelines for designing gardens I have ever read, including:

Keep the center open
Plan with severe formality then plant informally withing these formal bounds
Give space to reflecting water
Pay more attention than seems reasonable to foliage color and texture

But, Mitchell gives you permission to ignore his advice by noting that, "it is more important for the gardener to be enchanted than for critics to be pleased".

I also think the book is really funny, but not all of my friends agree. Earthman is filled with quotable observations like:

Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.
There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardeners.

and my favorite:

Flowers are of course a sexual display unmatched in the living world and anybody who does not respond a little probably has no blood in him.

I'm not sure if new copies of The Essential Earthman are currently available at brick and mortar bookstores but you can get used copies very reasonably through various Amazon re-sellers. Check it out for yourself or that special gardener on your shopping list.

Zinnia (Zinnia elegans)

2008-10-24T17:19:00.003-04:00

elegans (ELL-eh-ganz) Elegant

Zinnias really are easy to grow and they make nice cut flowers. After trying a few different kinds I now only grow Benary's Giant Series, sometimes called BluePoint strain. They are quite mildew resistant have the largest flowers. My zinnias are not necessarily all that large because they grow best with good fertility and plenty of water and I can't always provide those conditions at the farm.

Zinnias can be started ahead and transplanted quickly before becoming pot bound but that doesn't seem to work much better than just direct sowing them. They cannot tolerate any frost so they shouldn't be sown until all danger of frost has passed, usually around June 1st here in SE Michigan. I usually plant mine about 6 inches apart in rows a foot apart but that is probably a little too close.

You can find seed for Benary's Giants at Johnny's, Stokes and other mail order outfits but I have never seen them in retail seed racks. They come in 13 different colors including three different reds (Scarlet, Crimson and Deep Red). The other colors are Bright Pink, Lilac, Salmon Rose, Carmine Rose, Yellow, Orange, Coral, White, Purple and Lime Green. I usually grow White rather than Lime Green because the White is quite greenish itself and is more robust than the Lime Green. I also really like Orange, Salmon Rose, Purple, Crimson and Scarlet. I probably should just buy packets of mixed colors but am always thinking I want more of one color or another.

The flowers should be cut when the center petals are still unfolding and before the yellow stamens appear in the center. The first flowers are on fairly short stems but the plants will re-bloom repeatedly throught the summer with longer stems. Some growers succession sow zinnias. I have done this a few times but have not noticed that the flower quality for the later sowings is much better than the re-bloom on the first sowings.

Just because they are cheap and easy to grow does not mean zinnias are not impressive, people are always asking me what they are.

Sunflower (Helianthus annus)

2008-10-24T08:12:00.003-04:00

annuus (an-YEW-us) Annual

Sunflowers are supposed to be one of the easiest things to grow. If you feed birds you have probably found them coming up here and there all over your yard. How much can there be to know? I am a bit ashamed to admit that after growing sunflowers for the past 6 years for Good Scents, this was the first year I felt like I got the results I wanted. When it comes to growing sunflowers, as with so many aspects of gardening, the more I know, the more I realize I don't know.

I am only going to write about ornamental sunflowers, the ones grown for pretty flowers, not for seeds or oil. These started to become popular in the 90s with the appearance of pollenless F1 hybrids. Pollenless varieties are desireable for cut flowers because sunflowers produce copious amounts of pollen. When growing outside, bees collect and remove the pollen, but if cut and brought inside, the pollen instead collects on tables and counters creating a mess. Pollenless varieties produce little or no pollen and do not have this drawback.

Branching or Non-Branching?
Ornamental sunflowers can be either branching or non-branching. Branching varieties produce multiple stems growing out of the side of the main stalk, while the non-branching varieties grow a single stem and produce one flower at the top of it. If you are growing sunflowers to be enjoyed outside in the garden, the branching varieties are probably better. Branching sunflowers produce flowers over a longer season and have multiple flowers blooming at once at different heights on the same plant.

Each has its advantages, but for cut flowers I prefer the unbranched sunflowers. I experimented quite a bit with branched sunflowers, and while they produce many stems over a longer season, the stem length and the size quality of the flowers is variable. Because of their growth habit, branching varieties need to be planted quite far apart, at least 18 inches and up to 2 feet. This means they are not more space-efficient than the single stem varieties which can be planted quite close together unless you want the largest flowers possible.

In the case of sunflowers, bigger is not always better. A 6 or 8 inch diameter flower can be quite impressive outside but unless you are creating very large arrangements, a single flower that size can be hard to work into an arrangement. They are also so heavy that vases containing these huge sunflowers often tip over. Catalogs say to plant a foot apart for the largest flowers so this year I planted them about 6 inches apart and they were still about 4-5 inches across, plenty big for my purposes.

Colors
Most sunflowers are some flavor of yellow or another, from almost white to dark gold. On some the disks are brown and on others green. There are also some bi-colors with a ring around the disk like a giant black eyed susan, and quite a few that are described as "red" with names like Moulin Rouge and Claret. Red sunflowers are really a dark reddish brown mahogony color, like your grandmother's dining room table. For my taste they are too large and too brown to easily combine with other flowers for indoor arangements but they can look quite striking combined with other things outside. From what I can see all the red varieties are branching.

Varieties I Grow
The thing I didn't understand about sunflowers until this year is that to get a full season of sunflowers I needed to succession sow but also to grow varieties with different maturity dates with each sowing. In this way I got a continuous assortment of varieties coming into bloom all summer. I'd like to take credit for figuring this out myself but I read it in the Johnny's catalog.

These are the varieties I grew this past year with the number of days to maturity. All are single stemmed:

Premeir Lemon Yellow - pale yellow, black center - 40-50 days
ProCut Yellow - yellow, brown center - 50-60 days
ProCut Orange - dark yellow, brown center - 50-60 days
Orange Mahagony BiColor
Sunrich Orange - dark yellow, black center - 60-70 days
Sunrich Yellow - yellow, black center - 60-70 days
Sunbeam - yellow, green center - 70-80 days

How I Grow Them
Over the years I have tried starting sunflowers ahead in liners and direct sowing them. When started ahead and transplanted after a few weeks it seemed like the plants often ended up short and stunted. When I sowed them directly outside it seemed I never got them to sprout quickly or evenly. This year I compromised by starting them in liners and then transplanting them to the field as soon as the seed leaves had fully opened. This seems to be the best method for me. I get high germination quickly, and then by also getting the seedlings outside quickly, there is almost no transplant shock or stunting.

Botanical Names 101

2008-10-24T07:04:00.003-04:00

I order most of my perennials from a wholesale company called Bluebird Nursery in Nebraska and their latest newsletter contained a short glossary of names frequently used as botanical species names and their meanings. I'm lazy about looking up stuff like this and thought it was quite useful. Here they are:

argentea (ar-JEN-te-a) Silvery.
carnosus (kar-NO-sus) Fleshy
glabra (GLA-bra) Smooth, without hairs.
gracilis (GRAS-i-lis) Graceful, slender
japonica (ja-PON-i-ka) Of Japan
majalis (ma-JA-lis) Of May, Maytime
officinalis (o-fis-i-NA-lis) Medicinal
sempervirens (sem-per-VI-renz) Evergreen
sylvestris (sil-VES-tris) Of woods or forests
vulgaris (vul-GA-ris) Common

I knew a few of these like sylvestris, vulgaris and japonica, and might have guesses at gracilis but officinalis, argentea, majalis and glabra were new to me. Now some of the names I knew make more sense. For example, I knew lily of the valley was Convallaria majalis, and knew it bloomed in May, but didn't realize the name could have told me that. I knew American inkberry holly was Ilex glabra, and knew it didn't have spiny leaves like many hollies, but the name could have told me that, too.

Years ago I ordered a book called How Plants Get Their Names from J.L. Hudson Seeds - maybe I'll finally crack it open!

What to Expect Here This Winter

2008-10-13T16:22:00.002-04:00

I originally started this blog so that my customers could identify the flowers in their bouquets and read about how I grew them. I won't be delivering any more flowers in 2008 after this Friday, but I plan to actually be posting more often. I really only have time to write about how to grow the flowers and what I like about them during the off season, so that is what I will be focusing on between now and next April when I get started again.

The non-gardening season is one of the most fun parts of being a cut flower grower because that is when I get to plan next year and reflect on what worked and didn't work this year. I hope to be sharing more of those things this winter as well.

Bouquets for Monday, October 13th

2008-10-13T16:13:00.005-04:00

I have missed posting for the past couple weeks. No excuse really, I guess I am just wearing down. This is the last week, though, so I felt I had to post a few pictures.

Most of the flowers are chrysanthemums now. There are also forced lilies, a few snapdragons and even some small sunflowers. There was a hard frost at the farm on October 3rd so all the zinnias and dahlias were killed.

These 3 bouquets all contain about the same materials except for foliage. This first one uses leaves from a Purple Smoke Bush.

This one uses peony foliage. Sometimes peony foliage gets spotted and ratty looking by this time of year but on some plants it stays clean and just changes color to red or orange. This one had turned a really nice deep red.

Lastly, here is a bouquet with some of that eucalyptus that I first wrote about 7 or 8 months ago. It is finally ready! You can see one of the small black centered sunflowers dead center in the bouquet.

Bouquets for Friday Spetember 26th and Monday September 29th

2008-09-28T17:13:00.004-04:00

It is hard to believe it is the end of September and I have only 3 more weeks of deliveries. Bouquets for this week contained mainly chrysanthemums and asters. I also have lilies which were started in crates on July 15th, plus some annuals that are still producing like snapdragons, statice, zinnias and sunflowers.

I am both proud and ashamed of using roadside white asters in this yellow and white bouquet. Proud because they look quite nice and I don't have any white aster hybrids, but a bit ashamed because they are, after all. roadside weeds!

I made several burgandy and white bouquets this week just to get away from all the yellow, gold and red that is around in the fall.

I made many bouquets using purple and orange with dashes of gold. The lily here is 'Royal Sunset' and the picture really doesn't do it justice. The red-orange in the picture is actually kind of a deep pink and the yellow throat in the lily is more dark gold than it appears in the picture. The aster is a hybrid called 'Little Carlow'. The pinkish-orange spikes are an Agastache but the name escapes me right now.

I have a few of this wine red aster called 'Crimson Brocade' which is just beautiful. After dividing it again next year I should have plenty. I don't usually combine crimson and orange becqause they usually clash a bit, but it somehow works here, maybe because there is enough purple in the aster to bring out the purple-orange contrast.

Bouquets for Friday September 19th and Monday September 22nd

2008-09-22T18:17:00.005-04:00

The flowers for the 19th and 22nd are about the same as for last Monday the 15th except I had more asters available. This first has red aster 'Crimson Brocade' with pink, white and red mums:

Orange lilies, mums and zinnias with purple aster 'Marie Ballard':

This one is red celosia with pink aster 'Patricia Ballard' plus pink and white mums. I guess there is a snapdragon in there, too:

Lastly, here is a yellow lily combined with white and yellow mums, a sunflower and goldenrod.

All in all I thought they were quite nice!

Bouquets for Monday September 15th

2008-09-17T18:04:00.005-04:00

After a whole summer of mostly annuals, things are now switching back to perennials with the cooler weather. We have not had a frost but most of the usual annuals like sunflowers and zinnias prefer warmer temperatures and longer days.

Asters have finally started blooming. The purple one below is 'Marie Ballard'. The taller mums are commercial but the shorter ones were grown locally. The feathery spike at the top is celosia.

I was talking to a local mum grower who told me the short stature is probably due to the drought in the summer - I just couldn't keep them wet enough.

I still had a few lisianthus and used them in Monday's bouquets. A new crop is just starting to flower and will be appearing in the next week or so.

Bouquets for Friday September 12th

2008-09-11T18:58:00.002-04:00

I missed posting on September 5th and 8th, but I'm still using the same flowers: sunflowers, a few lisianthus, lilies, zinnias, statice, artemesia, delphiniums and dianthus.

For today's bouquets I had to use some commercial chrysanthemums because the chrysanthemums I am growing have mostly been too short. The place I used to buy chrysanthemum cuttings went out of business and the ones I have been able to find have just not grown tall enough.

I'm not including any pictures because they are so similar to what I have done in the past. I expect to start getting New York asters in a day or two and hope to have those for next Monday.

Bouquets for Monday September 1st

2008-08-31T19:03:00.003-04:00

The lisianthus are starting to run out so I can't be as generous with them as I have been for the past several weeks. I have a third sowing coming along but they won't be ready for a few more weeks. I've been using more foliage to make up for fewer lisianthus. I often use few if any "greens", preferring to use small filler flowers instead, but this week nearly all the bouquets contained either baptisa, silver artemesia or Sweet Annie.

Because the contents of the bouquets has not changed much I have been mostly posting pictures of more unusual color combinations. Most of the bouquets are still in more traditional color combinations like red-yellow-orange, pink-white-purple and so on, but I have already posted so many pictures like that it seems silly to post more.

This one is a combination of silver artemesia, salmon zinnias, light purple lisianthus, gladioli and a few spikes of salmon agastache. The agastache has an aromatic, minty smell.

The next is yellow and white with ferny Sweet Annie as a foliage filler. The other flowers are lisianthus, zinnias, helenium (small gold flowers top left) and solidaster.

This last one contains no foliage and a combination of pink lisianthus, red, green and pink zinnias and white statice.

Heirloom tomatoes

2008-08-29T13:04:00.006-04:00

I don't grow very many vegetables. This year all I grew were sugar snap peas, lettuce, kale and tomatoes. In 2007 I bought a number of heirloom tomatoes from Project Grow's annual plant sale. My favorite was 'New Brooks', a pinkish beefsteak. I liked it well enough to try saving the seed, something I have never done before. All I did was take some of the seeds and wipe them across a paper towel with my fingertip to remove the pulp and then let them dry for a day or two on the paper towel. Then I removed them from the paper towel and put them in a ziplock bag to be planted this spring.

I planted the seed expecting to get tomatoes like the parent, and some of the 'New Brooks' plants did produce large pinkish beefsteaks similar to the 'New Brooks' I had last year. However, some some produced golden yellow beefsteaks. They are both good but I actually like the gold better.

Something similar happened with cherry tomatoes. I have grown a number of cherry tomatoes over the years, usually hybrids like'Sun Sugar' or 'Sun Gold'. After awhile I started seeing volunteer tomato plants that produced small cherry tomatoes about the size of a grape. They tasted pretty good so last year when I saved the 'New Brooks' seed I saved some seed from the volunteer cherry tomatoes, too. Surprisingly, these seed gave me plants producing two very distinct cherry tomatoes.

The smaller one is about the size of a small grape and is a pale orangey-pink. The larger one is bigger around than a quarter, but smaller than a golf ball and is classic, deep tomato red. They taste very different, too. The larger one is sweet and tastes...well, like a cherry tomato. The smaller one is a little more tart and more fruity or citrusy. I keep eating one and then the other and trying to figure out what is different.

I asked Royer, Project Grow's heirloom seed guru, how he could explain this since he had told me a few years ago that tomatoes typically do not naturally cross pollinate. Royer said that 'New Brooks' is not a very pure strain and he had also seen some of the following generation turn up yellow.

At any rate, these unexpected results have made the whole idea of saving tomato seeds much more fun! I've already saved the seed from all 4 varieties but will have to wait until next year to see what they produce.

Bouquets for Friday August 29th

2008-08-29T13:02:00.004-04:00

Once again, no new flowers. I don't think anything new will appear until the asters start blooming in a week or so.

As it turned out, none of the sea hollies I planted came up. However, I did have a couple at the house so I made a bouquet using them.

I also did more purple and orange, a combination I never seem to get tired of.

My friend Deb once told me that she only liked red combined with white so I was thinking of her when I made this last one.

Bouquets for Monday August 25th

2008-08-24T16:50:00.004-04:00

I used a lot of Baptisa foliage in these bouquets. I also used Sweet Annie (Artemesia annua) in a few of them. Other than that it is still the same flowers just combined in different ways. Here is an example of the Baptisa foliage. It is almost as blue as eucalyptus, and certainly easier to grow but of course does not have that great scent.

I am getting more comfortable using the silver artemesia foliage. It looks really nice with blues and pinks, it might even work with yellow but I have not tried that. Artemesias all have a sharp, herby scent. I find it invigorating but some people might not like it.

I really liked this simple bouquet of white lisianthus and statice with orange zinnias. I keep meaning to do more like this but orange has generally been in short supply this year. Too much cantelope color and not enough orange.

Bouquets for Friday August 22

2008-08-23T05:33:00.005-04:00

No new flowers but a few new combinations. This is Rudbeckia lacinata, light purple lisianthus and solidaster.

Pink lisianthus, white lilies, 'Amazon Rose Magic' dianthus, white zinnias and dahlias. People are always asking about the bi-color snapdragon - it is 'Opus Appleblossom'.

This is salmon pinks zinnias and statice with 'Echo Champagne' lisianthus and some orange gomphrena thrown in as accents.

The same salmon statice and zinnias combined with light purple lisianthus and solidaster.

Finally, white lilies, 'Cinderella White' lisianthus, yellow zinnia and rudbeckia, and solidaster.

There were also purple-white, red-yellow-orange, and all purple bouquets but I've posted plenty of pictures of thoser recently.

Bouquets for Friday August 15th and Monday August 18th

2008-08-17T16:44:00.006-04:00

I never got around to posting about last Friday so I'm combining it into Monday. There is not much new to say because the flowers I have been using have not been changing much. Lisianthus, sunflowers, statice, zinnias, feverfew, dianthus, lilies, rudbeckia, ageratum - quite a list when it is all strung together but it has not changed much in the past few weeks.

I've been making lots of purple and white bouquets for the past couple weeks. The only thing in this bouquet that hasn't appeared in previous weeks is the big white dahlia.

I made several for Monday with this somewhat unorthodox color combination of "champagne" lisianthus with yellow statice and cherry red zinnias and dianthus. The lisianthus is able to pick up both the yellow and the cherry colors.

I never seem to get tired of combining apricot or orange and purple. I prefer orange but I've got melon colored lilies so this is what I came up with.

Last Friday I made quite a few bouquets with purple and white lisianthus, fuzzy blue ageratum and pale yellow solidaster.

Each week I end up making a few one of a kind bouquets though I usually don't take pictures of them because only one customer will actually receive one. Here is one that is made up entirely of apricot/peach/salmon colors. It is more Martha Stewart-ish than most of the stuff I do but I really liked it.

Last Friday I made one bouquet using silver and pink that was kind of fun. The silver is from artemesia 'Silver King'.

Looking at the bouquets from the past few weeks you can see why I go to so much trouble to grow lisianthus. They are beautiful cut flowers and I like to be able to have enough to use them generously.

Bouquets for Monday August 11th

2008-08-12T16:36:00.002-04:00

Nothing really different today from the past couple weeks. Lilies, lisianthus, liatris, sunflowers, zinnias, statice are the main flowers. The color combinations have been pink-white, all purple, red-white, red-yellow-orange, all similar to ones I have been doing for the past couple weeks.

I did make a few purple and green ones for Monday that were kind of fun:

Bouquets for Friday, August 4th

2008-08-09T20:06:00.003-04:00

Still using about the same flowers as for the last couple weeks. Solidaster, a naturally occurring hybrid of goldenrod and aster that I really like has started to bloom. Solidaster has tiny pale yellow flowers that can be combined with almost anything. Here is a picture of it combined with lily 'Suncrest', lisianthus 'Echo champagne' and dianthus 'Amazon Neon Red'.

I feel like you can take almost anything and combine it with lisianthus and it looks elegant. The next picture is of white lisianthus with yellow zinnias, statice and yarrow and red gomphrena.

In addition, Friday's bouquets included many pink-white, all purple, and red-yellow-orange bouquets similar tot he ones I've been making for the past week or so.

Bouquets for Monday August 4th

2008-08-04T08:06:00.005-04:00

Today's flowers were essentially the same as last Friday's. About half the bouquets were either pink-white or the all purple ones. The purple ones looked a little more elegant because I had a perennial statice as a filler.

The rest of the bouquets were red-yellow-orange, lavender-salmon or one of a kind like blue-white or purple-white.The red-yellow-orange bouquets had a stalk of this cool millet, 'Joker' that kind of looks like a cattail.

Bouquets for Friday, August 1st

2008-08-01T09:31:00.005-04:00

Whenever I am able to put the bouquets together quickly they turn out nice, and these went together real quick and easy. Lisianthus appeared in pretty much all the bouquets today. I did several like this with just different shades of purple. The lisianthus are 'Twinkle Deep Blue' and 'Echo Lavender' and they are combined with purple liatris, verbena bonariensis, 'Amazon Neon Purple' dianthus, purple zinnias and phlox 'Nicki'.

I did a number with pink lisianthus, white liatris, 'Amazon Rose Magic' dianthus and a red (deep pink) oriental lily called 'Arabian Night'.

With all the yellow flowers available in late summer I combined 'Cinderella Yellow' lisianthus (really a cream), with sunflowers, yarrow, rudbeckia, statice and zinnias to make a number of yellow and white bouquets.

I also made one that was just purple and white. The lisianthus here is 'Echo Blue Rim', combined with white snapdragons, deep blue statice, ageratum and phlox 'Blue Boy'.

Bouquets for Monday July 28th

2008-07-28T16:01:00.007-04:00

Monday's flowers were quite similar to last Friday except I had more lisianthus to work with. I made quite a few combinations with white - purple and white, pink and white, yellow and white. The double lisianthus with the blue edge is 'Echo Blue Rim'. The sweet william is 'Amazon Neon Purple', a first year flowering variety. The spikes are liatris.

The pink and white bouquets contained double lisianthus 'Conderella Pink', pink snapdragons and larkspur, white echinops and white feverfew as filler.

The yellow and white bouquets are about the same as last Friday except these include cream colored lisianthus 'Cinderella Yellow'

This last bouquet contains 'Twinkle Deep Blue' lisianthus combined with liatris, 'Amazon Neon Purple' dianthus. The green flowers are bupleureum. This is the first year I have successfully grown these, they need cold to germinate.

Bouquets for Friday July 25th

2008-07-25T16:43:00.005-04:00

The first of the lisianthus I planted last January have started blooming. The ones in the bouquet below are 'Twinkle Blue Blush'. The grass is 'Tapestry' millet, and the sunflowers are 'ProCut Lemon'. There is also a bit of yellow statice and some yellow rudbeckia. This bouquet is 100% annuals.

The next bouquet has pink larkspur, 'Raspberry Wine' mondarda, white statice, red zinnias, 'Natural Feelings' phlox, snapdragons and lily 'Triumphator'. The big lilies are lovely and fragrant but a little hard to incorporate into a bouquet because each flower is held horizontally.

Here is today's version of a red-yellow-orange bouquet. 'Tapestry' millet like in the first one with orange lilies, red snapdragons, and orange and yellow statice. The yellow pom-pom flowers at the top of the bouquet are from plants given to me by a friend. I think they are Rudbeckia laciniata 'Golden Glow'.

Bouquets for Friday July 18th and Monday July 21st

2008-07-20T17:32:00.004-04:00

I forgot to take pictures for Friday but the flowers I used were about the same for tomorrow.

Lots of red, yellow and orange bouquets because I had LOTS of red and orange lilies. The first sunflowers have been coming in. I did several sowings of these so they should be appearing regularly for the next couple months.

There were quite a few pink-purple-green bouquets Friday but just a few for Monday. The green spikes are Bells of Ireland. You can also see a couple purple zinnias in there. In the upper center, next to the green spike, is an unusual double phlox called 'Natural Feelings'.

There were also quite a few bouquets that were various combinations of pink, white, blue and purple. I included a picture of this one because it contains white globe thistles (Echinops).

Pink, yellow and white annual statice appeared in most of Monday's bouquets.

Bouquets for Monday July 14, 2008

2008-07-15T06:30:00.008-04:00

A few new flowers appeared between last Friday and Monday's bouquets. I have not had time to write anything in detail about most of these and probably won't until this fall.

The first sunflowers have started flowering. There were only a few so most people did not get them but there will be plenty of them by Friday.

I used green nicotiana for the first time. These will not be showing up very often this year because I lost about 2/3 of the plants in the late frost we had on May 29th. This bouquet also contains Echinacea (dead center in the picture), lavender Verbena bonariensis, and annual phlox (white with purple eye on the far left). The purple phlox with the white eye is 'Laura'.

This bouquet is similar to some I made last Friday except it also includes white Lysmachia clethroides (gooseneck flower). the others are larkspur, lilies, astilbe and peonies.

This red, yellow orange bouquet is about the same as last Fridays except it also includes red Crocosmia on the left and right.

Except for the verbena and sunflowers, all the other new flowers - Lysmachia, Crocosmia, Echinacea - are perennials.

Bouquets for Friday July 11, 2008

2008-07-12T19:31:00.004-04:00

I really liked the purple and orange bouquets this Friday. The purple in this one is larkspur, an annual relative of delphiniums.

I have shown lots of pictures of red-yellow-orange bouquets this year but these had no white in them. The white really cools them off, these looked really, really HOT.

I made quite a few light blue and pink bouquets like this one. The peonies were harvested more than a month ago and have been waiting in the refridgerator wrapped in plastic.

The pink spikes in this last bouquet are also larkspur. The varigated foliage here is apple mint. It also had some red achillea in it but I don't think you can see it very easily.

Label Problems

2008-07-08T17:10:00.002-04:00

I just discovered that Blogger won't let me assign more than 200 characters in labels to a post. When I created the labels I intentionally made them as descriptive as possible - Leucanthemum (Shasta Daisy), Gypsophila (Baby's Breath) and so on - which is now a problem because it doesn't take very many to add up to 200 characters and then some label has to be left off.

When I get a chance (which unfortunately may not be right away) I figure out what I have to do to shorten the labels.

Bouquets for Monday July 7th, 2008

2008-07-08T06:26:00.007-04:00

All the bouquets are still made up of at least 80%-90% perennials. A few annuals are trickling in - baby's breath, snapdragons, clarkia - but all the big flowers are still perennials like delphiniums and lilies.

As more and more flowers come in I am able to use more color schemes each week. Monday's flowers included these:

Blue-yellow-white pretty much the same flowers except I now have Centaurea macrocephala.

I've will keep making this light blue and coral combination as long as the Clarkia hold out. I really like it.

Yellow-red-orange (and sometimes white) is a color scheme I use fairly often but it looks different throughout the year as the flowers change.

Blue-pink-white (and sometimes crimson) is a classic combination for a perennial border that I always think looks good in a vase. The white and pink pinwheel phlox is 'Natasha', and the red-purple monarda is 'Raspberry Wine'. The red monarda 'Jacob Kline' that you see above is true red - it doesn't really have any orange in it so it can be combined with both oranges and pinks, but 'Raspberry Wine' definitely has a lot of blue in it. Both of these monardas are resistant to powdery mildew.

Purple or lavender with orange or melon is the color combination people most often comment on. The colors are a bit deceptive in the photo. The orange lily and the butterfly weed are brilliant ORANGE, not almost red as they appear in the picture.

Bouquets for Friday July 4th, 2008

2008-07-06T12:56:00.001-04:00

I again forgot to take pictures but it doesn't matter much because the bouquets were about the same as Monday's. I did do a few extra red white and blues.

Bouquets for Monday, June 30th

2008-07-01T18:37:00.008-04:00

I was pretty much working with same flowers as last Friday. I made one red-white-blue bouquet that turned out pretty well so I may try to do more of these on Friday. The bright red flowers are Monarda didyma 'Jacob Kline', and the airy little white flowers are annual baby's breath (Gypsophila elegans)

Quite a few bouquets were purple and orange. The achillea you see in the middle left of the bouquet is 'Terra Cotta'.

I also made a few red-yellow-white bouquets with white delphiniums and red lilies. The big bright yellow daisy is Heliopsis scabra, a really great long lived perennial I have not had time to write about yet.

Most of the others were similar to Friday's: blue-yellow, blue-pink-white, pink-purple-green and pale blue-salmon.

Bouquets for Friday June 27th

2008-06-27T16:25:00.008-04:00

Each week one or two new flowers appears. This week I now have astilbes, clarkia, orange asclepias, and a few snapdragons.

Friday's bouquets each had 3 delphiniums. The color combinations were mostly blue-yellow and purple or lavender and orange.

My favorites were 3 bouquets with light blue delphiniums, bicolored snapdragon 'Opus Appleblossom', salmon pink clarkia, white astilbe and feverfew.

There were also a few blue-pink-white and pink-purple-green bouquets similar to these:

Bouquets for Monday, June 23

2008-06-23T20:39:00.006-04:00

About 3/4 of today's bouquets looked like these two:

The yellow daisy is actually a shasta daisy called 'Sonnenshein' (Sunshine). The airy purple flowers in the first bouquet are larkspur 'Blue Cloud' and the little pink daisies in the pink and blue bouquet are erigeron.

There were also several bouquets in a pink-purple-green color scheme. The pink Clear Springs delphiniums are usually a dusty rose or mauve color like the ones in the picture. I didn't like the color at first until I saw how good it could look with purple and green.

Lastly, there were also a few all pastel bouquets. This photograph makes it look like a bouquet with 2 big yellow eyes and a bright pink mouth. I've really got to get my friend Leslie to take some of these pictures to avoid gaffes like this.

When the bouquet is all pastel like this it looks kind of Easter-y, like a cotton candy confection.

Why I love my job

2008-06-20T14:25:00.002-04:00

I don't know how much it shows in this blog but I really do fuss over these bouquets, trying to make something beautiful out of whatever I have to work with each week. Flowers can have a special kind of impact on people that isn't like anything else, and if I am doing my job right, people will hopefully feel delight when they open the door and see their bouquet.

This morning I was happy to get a couple notes from customers when I was doing deliveries. One read, "Everything has been beautiful!" and another said "Ongoing thanks for your consistent deliveries of beautifully selected flowers. The peony plus other flowers - this past week's bouquet - are still lovely."

Have I got the greatest customers or what?

Bouquets for Friday June 19th

2008-06-20T14:04:00.007-04:00

I got caught a little short of filler flowers today because most of the feverfew from last year didn't make it though the winter for some reason. I ended up resorting to commercial white chrysanthemums in most of the bouquets. All the main flowers were about the same as Monday - delphiniums, peonies, lilies, yarrow, leucanthemum, alchemilla, veronica and trollius. There was still a little sweet william and penstemon and most bouquets also contained hosta leaves and mint.

Color combinations for today were blue-yellow-white, apricot-purple, apricot-lavender, blue-pink-white and red-yellow-white. If you got flowers today, your bouquet probably looked something like ones of these:

All in all they were quite nice though I always feel a little guilty when I have to resort to using commercial flowers.

Bouquets for Monday June 16th

2008-06-15T13:51:00.003-04:00

There were some nice color combinations in these flowers but the bouquets didn't look as full to me as they have the last couple times. Most of them contained a delphinium, a lily and two or three peonies so there were lots of big flowers but perhaps not as many smaller ones.

These are pretty much the same flowers as last Friday - peonies, delphinium, trollius, sweet william, veronica, mock orange, yarrow, and alchemilla. A few bouquets also contained some white phlox.

This next one actually looked a lot brigher than this. The colors are red, yellow, orange and white.

This one looked pretty cool because the white lily opens quite green and matches the alchemilla but contrasts with the pinks.

You can see the white Phlox maculata on the left in this yellow, blue and white bouquet.

Bouquets for Friday June 13th

2008-06-12T18:48:00.006-04:00

More new flowers to play with. A few delphiniums have started blooming, yarrow 'Moonshine', Penstemon 'Husker Red', alchemilla, and the first of the field grown (non-forced) lilies. In addition, a few of the bouquets contained mock orange, blue Veronica 'Sightseeing Mix', and peppermint foliage. Some of these I have not written about in detail - I knew this would happen once a lot of flowers started coming in. I will try to identify them in the photographs below.

The pinkish spike in the top center of this bouquet is Penstemon 'Husker Red'. In additon there are lots of peonies, sweet william. a lily and sprigs of alchemilla.

The second bouquet has a purple delphinium - it is 'Aurora Purple', field grown lily 'Salmon Classic', shasta daisies, orange trollius 'Golden Queen', white peonies, and white sweet william.

The last picture shows orange trollius with scarlet sweet william, yellow yarrow 'Moonshine', and a white lily. The spike is a stem of mock orange.

These all turned out pretty well. I know I've said that for the past few weeks but I really have been pretty happy with all the bouquets recently.

Bouquets for Monday June 9th

2008-06-09T18:23:00.003-04:00

I forgot to take pictures again which is a shame because these were quite nice. It is actually pretty hard for them not to be nice when the main flowers are peonies, lilies and dianthus. The colors go together easily and the forms all complement each other. In addition, many bouquets had baptisa, trollius, and a few still had iris and columbines. they looked quite similar to last Friday's but there were fewer columbines and iris and more dianthus.

Bouquets for Friday June 6th

2008-06-06T11:01:00.004-04:00

All of a sudden I have lots of flowers! Sweet william, peonies, baptisa, iris, forced lilies, and still a few columbine, trollius, shasta daisies and painted daisies. I used some stems of the ornamental grass Chasmanthium latifolium (Northern Sea Oats) as accents this week, too.

The peony in this first picture is 'Coral Charm' and the dianthus are 'Scarlet' and 'Newport Pink'. The colors of the dianthus don't really come through in this picture, but it looked really great. The lily is 'Black Out'.

I don't know the names of all my peonies but I do know that the big reddish pink one below is 'Mt. St. Helens'

I'm not a very good photographer and I don't know if I ever really do the bouquets justice. I think most of the time they look nicer than the pictures, which I guess is better than the other way around. I was able to put them together quickly which always usually means the flowers all naturally complement each other nicely.

Sweet William are blooming

2008-06-06T10:55:00.004-04:00

The Sweet William have started blooming. Here are some pictures of the ones I have been growing. The first picture is of a double strain 'Super Duplex".

The next one is of 'Electron', a collection of eyed varieties.

Last is the dark maroon 'Nigrescens'

Baptisia australis (False Indigo)

2008-06-03T17:31:00.004-04:00

Baptisia australis is just coming into bloom now, providing welcome blue spikes of color for bouquets. Baptisia are slow to establish and can get really large. The base of a mature plant can be a foot or more across and the foliage will be 4 feet tall and spread to 4 or 5 feet. Like most slow growing perennials (peonies, balloon flowers, gas plants), baptisias do not move well and need to be sited carefully. You also have to be patient and live with a huge gap in your perennial border until the plant catches up with the spot you've reserved for it. The one pictured below will actually get broader once the flowers fade and the foliage matures.

Baptisia flowers are bluish purple and appear on spikes that are 12-18 inches long. They are pea relatives and this shows in the individual flowers and the foliage. After flowering, the plants form pods on the spike which will turn black and brittle as they ripen. These pods are quite attractive and can also cut for bouquets. The seeds rattle inside the pods which is kind of fun.

I have never tried to start this plant from seed although they do self seed sometimes around mature plants. They are not difficult to find but are not available as small starter plants. They can probably be found at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market or mail ordered from a place like Bluestone Perennials.

Bouquets for Monday June 2nd

2008-06-02T18:24:00.003-04:00

It is hard to believe, but this is 7th week for the 2008 season. Aside from commercail chrysanthemums, this week's flowers included - clustered bellflowers, forced lilies, a few dianthus (Sweet William), painted daisies, shasta daisies, trollius, columbine, baptisa, and peonies. The color schemes are getting more varied as I have more flowers to work with. In addition to the apricot-purple, pink-purple, red-yellow bouquets that have been appearing for the past few weeks, I did a few blue(purple) and yellow and also a few with pastel pink and pale yellow. I'm posting pictures of these just because the color schemes are a bit different.

Bouquets for Friday May 30th

2008-05-30T18:38:00.004-04:00

A few more local flowers are available but I'm still using commercial chrysanthemums, carnations and asters to fill things out. Today's flowers included forced lilies, 'Miss Kim' lilac, clustered bell flowers, Shasta daisies, alliums, iris and columbines. One lucky person got a peony and a couple bouquets also had some dianthus (Sweet William). If you got flowers today they probably looked like one of these. I thought they all turned out quite nice.

Wisteria

2008-05-27T04:25:00.005-04:00

In 1991 I went to Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania over Memorial Day weekend to go river rafting. The rafting was fun and there was great hiking through areas surrounding the river filled with rhododendrons and mountain laurel. It rained quite a bit for a couple days so we went to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, which turned out to be the highlight of the entire trip. Near the end of the tour we walked outside through a trellis covered walkway from the house to the guesthouse. A huge white wisteria was trained on the trellis and hundreds of white wisteria blossoms hung through the trellis over our heads. I thought it was one of the most stunning things I had ever seen.

In 2000 I moved to house on a one acre lot in Ypsilanti Township and that trellis was one of the effects I wanted to create at the new house. In 2002 we built the first section of what would eventually be a 5 section pergola in front of the house and planted a white Wisteria floribunda on one corner. The wisteria is 'Snow Showers' and came from Carroll Gardens.

Wisteria are notorious for taking years to begin blooming. There are all kinds of suggestions on the web about what you should try to make it start blooming - root pruning, don't fertilize, threaten to cut it down - but from what I can see you just have to wait. This one poked along for the 7 years until it finally produced 4 blossoms this year (you can see a couple of them in the picture). Based on my experience with the wisteria I planted at my last house, now that it has started, it should begin blooming more profusely each year.

Conditioning Lilacs

2008-05-26T18:37:00.003-04:00

I had read that to get lilacs to hold after cutting the stems should be scraped and split and the placed in hot water. I tried this treatment for the past couple years and found that the lilacs were usually wilting within a day.

This year I returned to where I had read this advice in the first place - Carolyne Roehm's A Passion for Flowers. It turned out I had not read the fine print carefully enough. Miss Roehm specifies the water should be between 120 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and I had used hot water from the tap which turned out to be only 110 degrees. I decided to split the difference and place the lilac stems in water that was heated to 135F. I left them there a few hours until the water had cooled. Be warned that this water is hot enough to brown any actual lilac flowers that get in the water, so make sure only the stems are placed in the hot water.

The additional 25 degrees appears to make a difference because the lilacs seem to be holding better this year, ususally 4-5 days. For my customers this is unfortunately only 3-4 days because the flowers are conditioned a day before they are delivered, but the results are encouraging.